


Make me mine

by Just_a_useless_writer



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Abuse, Body Horror, Gore, Jack/Maddie/Vlad is a past relationship, M/M, Minor Character Deaths, Self Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, tags will be updated as fic continues, time loops, warning some descriptions and tags have been left unclear to avoid spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:22:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29007492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Just_a_useless_writer/pseuds/Just_a_useless_writer
Summary: After the events of The Ultimate Enemy Danny winds up in a time loop where he strives to reach his desired ending, a world where both he and Vlad are good and 'perfect' so that Dan can be prevented forever.Warning: This summary has been left vague to avoid spoilers. This fic is darker than my previous Danny Phantom fic please read chapter notes at the beginning to read over trigger warnings.
Relationships: Danny Fenton/Vlad Masters
Comments: 51
Kudos: 63





	1. Attempt 487: Log 1: Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Wow new fic!
> 
> Like I say in the summary this fic is going to be darker than Overture so be sure to check in here for triggers and the like.
> 
> This chapter features some mild body horror, portal incident associated, nothing real bad, it’s short.

It always burned. 

No matter how many times it happened it always fucking burned. 

He’d thought he’d get used to it at some point. He’d hoped he wouldn’t fail enough times for him to wonder when he’d get used to it… but that’d been a few hundred loops ago. That hope had long faded and Danny was left asking why it never got any easier. 

Monotony did not make this simpler. 

Familiarity didn’t make the smell of searing flesh and hair any less acrid in his melted nose. It didn’t quiet his screams. It didn’t stop his back from bowing or his eyes from liquefying in the sockets. It didn’t stop the portal from chewing him up and spitting him out onto the cement floor of the lab which was always so cold it felt wet.

Danny opened his eyes, new, working, and of course, bright green. He already knew that, had for a very long time.

Sam and Tucker were beside him. Their hands were over him in his field of blurred vision. They were always so scared to touch him at first and Danny couldn’t quite blame them, but he wasn’t nearly as fragile as he appeared. 

“Danny!” Sam’s voice wasn’t always the first, there were differences here and there and Danny had been curious as to why in the beginning, but he’d stopped questioning it. What was the point of asking why even within a time loop some things were just slightly different when they happened again? In the end things always turned out the same. 

“Danny, oh my god are you okay?” Tucker asked and the answer was simultaneously yes and no for all the wrong reasons. 

Danny’s chest ached. He lifted his hand to clench his suit beneath his fingers and grit his teeth; he wanted to scream, he wanted to be hollow and he was…

He wanted his ribs to split open like a maw and swallow up his failures and frustrations. He wanted to become a god large enough to encapsulate the universe and blind his mind for eons. 

He was tired. 

He played along. 

Playing along was easier, smoother. Playing along meant less questions, less odd looks. Playing along ensured that Sam and Tuck behaved in more predictable patterns, didn’t suspect anything was wrong too soon. 

So he pretended to be shaken and scared. He screamed with them, panicked with them, looked in the mirror to see his familiar ghostly appearance and acted as if it were a stranger. 

Danny let them poke and prod at them, let them cycle through the emotions he has seen time and time again. He let them explain to his parents what had happened, let them take over while he sat in the background of the conversations, their voices static in his ears. 

How long had it been? 

How long had it really and truly been? Danny had lost track of time, he had counted at first, had tried to hold the knowledge inside him of how long each loop lasted, how many years and days… but he wasn’t capable of that anymore. In all honesty despite his best attempts to at least name the amount of loops he’d cycled through he wasn’t sure if it was accurate anymore. Four hundred and eighty seven sounded all at once like it was too much and not enough. 

Part of Danny would say that he’d always been here, that he’d been born in the portal, had taken form on the lab floor. He had been here for eons and he always would be. There was no world beyond the loop.

But that wasn’t true… it couldn’t be because despite everything Danny still remembered how it had all started.


	2. Attempt: Null: Log 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: This chapter contains the following.  
> \- vomiting (particularly in regards to abjection)  
> \- fairly graphic depictions of self harm, such as cutting  
> \- mentions of suicide  
> \- descriptions of death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important note.
> 
> When the attempt is written as "Null" this means that these events occurred before Danny enters the time loop.
> 
> Log numbers are mean to help keep track of the narrative since some things will happen out of order. For instance one attempt may have log 1 and in the next chapter have log 3, this would indicate that log 2 is missing (or is something Danny does not want to process or think about). 
> 
> I’m playing around with unreliable narration and form with this fic. Also I have update chapter ones title to show that it is log 1, the beginning of attempt 487.

  
  


Danny slammed the bathroom door behind him, locking it in a haste before running to the toilet. Gripping the side hard he vomited, his stomach reaching up from inside him to crawl through his throat and out over into the bowl.

It was the eggs he’d eaten for breakfast, eggs he hadn’t even remembered he’d eaten until that moment because he’d been gone for what, years? He wasn’t sure how time travel worked and the math was too hard at the moment. All he knew was that he’d traveled through time then traveled back and everything, everything that had happened in between then and now had been fucked up.

He heaved, heavy with terror, ice cold sweat on his brow, acid burning at the back of his teeth, headache forming where his eyebrows collided.

_Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck_

What was he going to do?

He coughed, sputtered, the heat of his vomit, the bile touch of it hurt and ached and scratched his esophagus until he felt as if blood might slip between his lips. The vomit went up his nose and he was choking. His arms slipped from under him and his hands moved in reflex to claw at his neck. He’d been choked by Vlad too many times, the response to get the feeling as far away as possible was automatic now, instinctive. He was sent bowling forward, so much of his weight had been bent over the bowl, so much of him crashing down and his legs scrambled for purchase on the tile.

He fell to the floor with a crash and the violent wrenching sent him into another spasm, more puke spilling out onto the floor, he tried to breathe and became suddenly terrified that he’d pull the liquid into his lungs and drown.

What a way to go that would be.

_Look at Phantom, the one who beat Dan not hours ago, who saved the world… choked to death on his vomit._

He continued to cough, the feeling wracking his body until his ribs felt as if they’d be shaken away from his lungs. Tears stung his eyes, he couldn’t think, he scrambled as best he could to paw at the bathroom sink. He managed to dump his and Jazz’s toothbrush from the cup they were kept in and turn on the water.

He filled the cup and downed it immediately, it tasted like his stomach and eggs, but that was to be expected.

A loud knocking came at the door and he jumped, water clattering from his hand and he groaned. It had been hard enough to get one glass, he didn’t know if he had the energy to get another.

“Danny?” His mom's voice pressed to the wood door like an ear worm, “Are you okay in there, baby?”

Far from it, “Y-Yeah...Yeah I’m good I just,” he didn’t even know how he was speaking, his shaking body wracked with pain and panic as his mouth moved of its own volition, vocal cords intent on self preservation. “I swallowed some water down the wrong side of my throat.”

It was a piss poor excuse and Danny swore his mom wouldn’t buy it, swore she’d smell the vomit and his sweat through the door and tell him he was a liar because Danny was, he was a liar, that’s all he ever was.

But then his father’s voice picked up close by, not right outside the door but at least near the landing in front of the stairs, “Oh I hate it when that happens!” He said, as loud and enthusiastic as ever and Danny could picture him out there in his jumpsuit as he continued, “And then you gotta drink water and at first the water only makes it worse and that’s only if you manage to get some of the water down in the first place because it’s hard to since you’re coughing too much to swallow and then—”

Danny groaned and sank back down to the floor. He placed his forehead against the tile and it was blissfully cold. “I’m going to take a shower.” He said, the sound distant and detached, but his mom, caught up in listening to his dad, had seemingly forgotten his violent coughing fit or how he’d slammed to the bathroom door.

“Okay sweetie!” She said, walking away and leaving Danny to curl in on himself and he knew the mess he’d made was soaking into the fabric of his shirt, but he couldn’t find it in him to care.

He trembled against the floor, mapped the familiar pores in the tile with tired eyes. When his body was ready to move it would take over, he knew this. He had been in so many bad situations that he knew when his muscles bunched they’d grind him through the motions of cleaning the floor and peeling his vomit soaked clothes from his skin. He wouldn’t have to think too hard about it.

For now he remembered.

He remembered his family’s screams as they'd struggled to escape the explosion, the smell of them in the air, the way he’d seen parts of them flung high out into the sky to land god knew where. Blood had struck his face and he hadn’t known who it belonged to.

Danny had acted like it was okay. Once Dan had been defeated it was fine. He’d smiled, acted like it was just any other ghost he fought. But it wasn’t fine, he wasn’t fine, he didn’t know how to be and wanted so desperately to fit himself into the box of okay.

He didn’t even know if Sam and Tucker were okay. Part of him screamed that he should check in with them, make sure they were holding up because he sure as hell wasn’t, but the idea of expending energy on others was too much. He couldn’t scrape up the energy to take care of himself, how the hell was he supposed to be strong enough to take care of others? That thought in and of itself had him gritting his teeth in frustration because heroes weren’t supposed to break down sobbing and coughing and puking on the bathroom floor.

He should have been setting his selfish hurt aside to care for his friends, should have been spending time with his family in a renewed sense of appreciation towards them. He’d just watched them die for fuck’s sake. Shouldn’t he want to be around them? Shouldn’t he be hugging them and telling them how grateful he was for them? Why were they the last people he wanted to see right now?

Finally his body moved.

His brain turned off and his muscle memory took over and he was shifting. His legs gathered underneath him and he was numb, blissfully so. There were dark spots in his vision and cotton in his ears and he thanked god for that mercy. He stood, washed his hands off in the sink and then bent over to pull the bleach and paper towels out from the cupboard underneath. Using bath towels to clean the vomit would be quicker but his mom would kill him if he got bleach on them, staining their fabrics in that burnt yellow-white.

He watched himself clean, stood outside his mind and body and floated as his arms did the work. They were sore and so was his back as he leaned over to scrub the floor, but he was too full of other things to care and in some ways the ache was nice.

He flushed the paper towels down the toilet along with the rest of his mess even though he knew it hurt the septic tank. If it did end up becoming a problem then that would be an issue for future Danny.

Sorry, future Danny, sometimes the chips just fell that way.

As it were he made sure the toilet didn’t clog then shuffled out of his clothes. Thankfully there was a small roll of trash bags beside the bathroom trash can and he stuffed the soiled fabric inside. He’d have to clean them sometime when his parents were out of the house and the plastic bag made sure he wouldn’t smell them under his bed when he hid them later.

Turning the shower on Danny stepped in letting the cold water rush against this skin until it grew warmer and warmer still, staining him a bright red. Head hanging he watched as the grime slid off him and down the drain and when tears stung his eyes anew he lied to himself and said that it was merely the bleach fumes causing him to cry.

The day was hitting him again, he could feel it in the catch of his chest, in how his fingers shook. He’d held it down until he’d gotten home and then as soon as he’d stepped through the front door and saw his mom it had slammed into him. He had remembered the explosion tearing through her, had pictured it vivid and painful in his mind’s eye, her body rending, and he’d ran up the stairs and into the bathroom, sick.

Now the visions were back again. He turned around, clawed at the faucet and turned it up as high as it would, let the water burn him in the way that made his skin feel like static electricity, like pins and needles.

Breathing hard he sunk down into the tub, legs lifting as he put his face in between his knees, hands gripping hard at his hair.

He’d watched his family _die_.

He’d watched his family die and he was just supposed to be okay with that‽

_Oh haha what an interesting adventure! Fighting ghosts sure is fun! You’re living a cool double life as a teenage superhero! Yay! You get to watch everyone you’ve ever loved die! Aw man that was wild huh? Go home and do your maths homework!_

_Never mind that you know what burning human flesh smells like. Never mind that your future self is definitely a murderer, fuck a whole ass serial killer. Never mind that you essentially consumed Plasmius through some weird merging type thing you didn’t even know ghosts could do and let’s definitely not think about the morality of forcing your ghost self’s body on to someone else’s because that’s a whole can of ethical worms!!_

_Oh! And you sorta kinda killed yourself! That’s always fun to think about!_

Danny’s mouth opened in a silent scream because if he screamed for real someone would burst into the bathroom and ask him what was wrong and he didn’t need that! He needed something, something else, something solid, something real when the hot water wasn’t enough, when the burn of it wasn’t painful enough to pull him from his spiraling thoughts or the way the bathtub seemed to waver and fall out from underneath him. He _needed_ —!

His eyes snapped open and up, peering wildly, desperately through the space between his knees to land on Jazz’s shaving razor in the little shower caddy they had. He’d promised himself after the first time that he wouldn’t do it again, that he’d deal with his issues in a healthier manner but fuck, fuck, fuck, if it didn’t sound good right now. Danny could imagine the cut of it, the sharp cold filling his mind as it had the first time not even that long ago when he’d broken his leg and had just needed to feel some other kind of pain.

Skulker had hit him with a fun new device that shorted out his powers and thrown him into the side of his own house before Sam and Tucker had managed to catch him in the thermos. He’d broken his tibia, it’d snapped clean through his skin as he’d crumbled into the ally by Fentonworks. All things considered it could have been worse, but he’d never experienced an injury quite as bad before then.

Thankfully his parents had been gone and Sam and Tucker had brought him to the bathroom, helping him into the tub so the blood wouldn’t spread as they googled how to set the bone.

He’d screamed as they had, hand flying out to grip the rim of the bath and as he had he’d grabbed Jazz’s razor by accident. She must have forgotten it there, some silly little one off, meaningless mistake, but as the blade had nicked his skin he’d felt something other than his leg for just a split second.

It hadn’t been a bad cut, but it had been enough and later that night as his bone stitched itself back together, long after Sam and Tuck had gone home, Danny’d gone back to the bathroom.

He’d slid the razor the wrong way against his leg, brushed it side to side and been frustrated by the confines it sat in, but it had been enough. Better than the fucking baby aspirin their mom let them keep in the bathroom that was for damn sure.

He’d sat back and let him feel some other pain, let his focus narrow and his mind clear and for the first time in a while he’d felt stable.

The next morning guilt had hit him like an all consuming wave, slamming against the shore of him. He had felt disgusted by himself. He had hurt himself, had cut himself and let it make him feel good and as his leg had throbbed with a dull ache he’d wanted to do it again.

How could he have let that happen? Danny Fenton, Phantom, wasn’t someone who hurt himself. Period.

He wasn’t weak like that.

So he’d promised not to do it again, but here he was back in the tub and the razor was there staring back at him.

Danny sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth, thought of Dan’s fangs and felt another rush of nausea push at the back of his throat and he was about to slip again so should he, shouldn’t he just take the razor in hand? It would be easier, blissfully so.

It would be easy and nice and simple, god so, so simple and life was so complicated right now.

He couldn’t remember reaching for it, but that hardly mattered because suddenly the blade of it was pressing into the print of his thumb and red was sliding down his skin, filling the air with its iron scent, and ancients…

That was better.

Danny’s blood was red and for an instance he was human.

He wasn’t a ghost, or a halfa, or a hero…

He was human.

He was human.

He was human.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Danny is not having a good time right now.   
> So yeah, this fic is gonna look at an au of what does Danny do after going through all this mental trauma.  
> So he's not in the one loop yet but oh he'll get there >:3c
> 
> Kudos and comments much appreciated as always <3  
> Love you guys uwu


	3. Attempt 487: Log 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We are back in attempt 487. Log 2 so this is a direct continuation of 487: Log 1. 
> 
> Content warning:  
> \- brief self harm

  
Eventually Danny was left alone, given free reign to do as he pleased and as in most loops he chose to fall face first into bed.

Sam and Tucker had taken the brunt of explaining what had happened in the lab, Danny standing back and later claiming that he was merely shook up when his friends had asked him why he’d been so quiet. They took the explanation easily, they always did.

They went home, telling Danny to keep in touch with them and he promised to, but he still set his phone to silent. He needed to clear the static from his mind.

Burrowing into the sheets he inhaled the familiar scent of home and sighed, drifting in a half sleep before rolling over onto his back and looking up at the green glow in the dark stars on his ceiling. They weren’t arranged accurately and in some loops he had the energy to set them into their proper patterns, but he wasn’t in the mood at the moment.

Over all the loops he’d done Danny had become quite the voracious scholar. At first he’d just assumed that he might as well learn as much as he could while he had the time. Then it had become a way to escape the crushing knowledge that the odds were stacked against him, that he’d be reset back to the beginning of the loop with all his knowledge intact.

He’d long since memorized the constellations above his home and despite his childhood love for space he didn’t take much comfort in them anymore.

There was little wonder left in the world.

He lifted his hands above his face, looked at his too real hands.

He shifted, going ghost and glowing in the dark of his room like the plastic above him. His nails lengthened to the claws he’d learned to form them into as his appearance turned ever more haunting. He curled his fingers inwards, pressing the claws to his palms until ectoplasm spilt down over his wrists.

Danny wondered how long this loop would last.

* * *

When the house fully settled for the night, falling silent save for the electricity humming through the walls, Danny disappeared.

He reappeared in Wisconsin, miles and miles away from his childhood home. Perhaps the only good thing about being stuck in a time loop was the opportunity to practice with his powers and he’d mastered far more skills than he ever thought possible.

Sometimes he would laugh at how Vlad would speak to him, claim he had years of experience over him and could teach him. Now, the other halfa was a beginner in his eyes, naive and in so many ways endearing. He postured himself a master of his abilities when Danny knew the truth. Vlad fell far, far short of their potential.

When the loops were long enough Danny would teach him.

He reformed right outside of Vlad’s attention radius, at the edge of what he could consciously detect. Vlad was rather defensive of his territory and Danny couldn’t blame him, the idea of home was an alluring one and protecting that sense of security helped Vlad keep his emotions in check. Over the many years he’d been trapped Danny had learned a great deal about Vlad, about his fears and insecurities, all the things he’d do to mitigate them, how he acted when his sense of control was shattered.

Vlad’s senses stalked the borders of his domain like a predator, vigilant for trespassers and ever hostile. One step too close and Vlad would appear, Danny knew from experience.

He could of course suppress his ecto-signature, having long learned how to make himself invisible to most of Vlad’s senses. But it was far easier to peer in on him while he was asleep and it wasn’t quite Vlad’s bedtime yet, so for now he waited.

Danny sat down in the grass, placing himself on a hill that overlooked Vlad’s castle estate. It had become one of his favorite places, quiet and above the world. The grass was long enough to rustle around him, sliding over itself in the wind. Danny plucked a fat, green blame from the ground and placed it flat between his thumbs, pinched between the pads and bases. He pressed his mouth to the hollow between his fingers where the grass was drawn tight as a guitar string and blew out a rush of air.

The whistle he produced was high and loud, bursting into the air like a trumpet's call.

Loop 487 officially began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I’m looking at unrealizable narration and form with this fic the chapters are going to be shorter than my usual ones and there’s also going a be a lot of jump cuts.think I’ve said that already, but I can’t remember while typing, so just uh be aware I guess.
> 
> Also A+ stalkerish activity Danny  
> Also, also the loop 'officially' begins not when it starts chronologically, but when Danny first gets close, in any sense, even just physically, to Vlad  
> Hm 🤔  
> Maybe heavy handed 😂 
> 
> Ps. If you've never made a whistle out of a grass blade I highly recommend it you can make louder whistle than you would think.


	4. Attempt 133: Final: Log 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello again everyone! 
> 
> Important note: This chapter introduces a new mechanic, the marker "final" in a chapter title. This means that there are no further logs, that this is the end of the loop. There is no attempt 133: log 5 or so on. When a chapter is marked as this that means there’s nothing further on to explore chronologically speaking. 
> 
> Also: this chapter has brief instances (very brief) of Vlad POV, we'll get more of that later as the fic progresses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning:  
> \- minor character death  
> \- blood  
> \- Danny being an asshole

  
_Messy, messy, messy, messy._

Ancients this loop was a disaster.

Danny huffed in a deep, time addled, exasperated frustration. He wanted to let his head tip back in a long, well overdue groan.

Vlad!

That annoying asshole!

Bastard. Idiot. Piece of shit.

Danny loved him oh, oh how Danny adored him, but god he was a stupid fucking _thing_.

He was childish and impudent and immature and he called Danny all those things and Danny just laughed and laughed because he didn’t know how wrong he was and god,someone, anyone, please listen. What Danny would have given to catch a break…

Every last inch of him, every last mote and atom, Danny would have given it all.

He had long ago.

He already knew what was in the basement, it was easy enough to guess and he’d seen it before. The first time had been the worst, it always was. Danny wasn’t fond of new things anymore. But he’d become perhaps a bit desensitized to the smell of blood in the air.

He sighed as he saw the open entrance to Vlad’s underground lab.

Vlad had invited their family down to his castle in Wisconsin for a few days. Overall the loop had been fairly stable. Vlad was still very Vlad-ish, intent on killing his father and stealing his mom, but he wasn’t the worst Vlad Danny had encountered.

He had offered them a week away from home to ‘relax’ during Danny and Jazz’s spring breaks and it was obviously an evil plot, but his parents didn’t know that.

Things had moved fairly predictably after their arrival. Jazz had taken the opportunity to explore nearby colleges, meanwhile Vlad had flirted with his mother, insulted his father at every turn, and vaguely threatened Danny.

It was run of the mill, but then Danny had been a fool and left his parents alone for twenty minutes. Was a nap really too much to ask for?

Apparently it was. Before he had fully begun to drift off he’d heard a scream, quickly silenced, and then nothing. If there was anything Danny had learned it was that there was nothing quite so suspicious as a scream followed by absolute silence.

He’d groaned, pulling himself up from his bed and sinking through the floor into Vlad’s main living room where he hid the entrance to his underground lab. He didn’t bother sinking down into the lab proper, it wouldn’t make a difference now.

Instead Danny walked down the stairs, a. heavy iron scent smoothing its way down the back of his palette and throat, drying him from the inside. He could go for a drink.

In most loops he never got old enough to drink, but Danny hardly cared about laws anymore.What was the point? Nothing was permanent.

He sighed softly in the dark, running his fingers through his hair and wondering what horrible vision he’d be met with.

Vlad was a destructive, clumsy creature. He was prone to _accidents_. For all his planning, all his manipulation, he was at the end of every day and every loop, messy.

Danny didn’t like that.

He hummed just a bit to himself as he descended further beneath Vlad’s castle, he’d come across a song he’d never heard before recently and it’d gotten stuck in his brain. He was angry, yes, but no point being pissed now. What was done was done. It was better to just let it slide off his back, hum his stupid little ear worm, and anticipate the next go around.

Vlad didn’t notice him as he came into the room, too swept up in the macabre scene he’d created. His back was to Danny and Jack’s body lay discarded on the floor. Danny’s eyes caught his mother’s own and she almost said something from her position in Vlad’s arms, looking back over his right shoulder. There was fear there, in her expression, in the way she shook and how a choked sound escaped her along with just a touch of blood before Vlad moved.

He tugged his arm away from her and Danny caught a glimpse of a large, silver butcher knife being yanked out of Maddie’s stomach, red dripping to the floor. She crumpled to the ground with a heavy thunk and Vlad let out a wail akin to that of a snared rabbit.

Poor thing.

“A knife? Really?” That was a new one, Danny had to give him that, “Out of all our abilities, you go with a knife?”

Vlad flinched, jumped nearly out of his skin, and whipped around. Blood covered his front, staining across his suit and although it was hard to see on his black pants and jacket Danny knew his white shirt was ruined underneath. The knife slipped through his fingers, clattering to the ground in an all too loud crash, metal clanging against concrete. “D-Daniel!”

Great deduction Vlad.

The other halfa’s hands lifted in surrender, coated in red that was quickly drying to a deep maroon, “I… I she… you, she didn’t…”

Danny rolled his eyes, “Of course she didn’t fall in love with you and run into your arms, you killed her husband.” He said, level and cold and Vlad stumbled back a bit, voice caught at the edge of another panicked whine. This was what it was like nine times out of ten when Vlad truly achieved his goal of killing Jack Fenton. The weight of murder would slam into him and leave him shaking like a middle schooler who’d been brought out to their backyard to put their dog down.

Killing was so much harder than most people seemed to think.

It was almost laughable how people fooled themselves into thinking it was simple.

Vlad always built the murder of Jack up in his mind as this idealized, romanticized, situation that he couldn’t possibly be impacted negatively by, couldn’t possibly regret, but regret chose a person, not the other way around. Vlad had no control over it.

“She… Daniel…” Vlad tried again and Danny could see it in his eyes, see the question forming in his bone marrow along with the deep terror of having taken the life of another, especially that of the woman he claimed to love.

“Oh she came at you with the knife then?” Danny hummed, looking the scene over and wondering just how the events had played out. Had Jack gone down first and Maddie had gotten suspicious, grabbing a knife from the kitchen just in case? She was a vigilant woman. She listened to her gut, took precautions, and didn’t question it when something felt off. If she had sensed something was wrong she would have gone in prepared, but why not bring her ghost weapons? Sure they didn’t hurt humans as much, something she would assume Vlad was, but they still weren’t pleasant to get struck by.

Danny waved the thoughts off. They didn’t matter, his parents were already dead.

“A-Aren’t you…”

“Angry? Upset? Scared?” Danny asked, invading Vlad’s personal space, but the other halfa did little other than try to back up in response, breathing tight. Shock was a bitch.

He reached out, touching Vlad’s cheek, an action that had him flinching again, searching Danny’s eyes for answers he knew Vlad wouldn’t find. There was a streak of blood across his cheek and Danny pressed his thumb to it, smearing the color in and up along the bone where it cooled and dried quickly. Danny could feel the stickiness of it, the touch that turned to tack glue as the blood congealed. He wondered, however briefly, whose it was and was reminded of the first time his parent’s blood had struck his own cheek the day he had met Dan.

“I’m _furious_.”

Danny pulled his hand back and in an instant laid Vlad flat across the floor, the sound of his slap ringing in the still, death drenched air. His hand stung from where it had collided with Vlad’s face, his fingers flexing with the burn of it.

“You always want this!”

Vlad stared up at him, eyes wide, cradling his cheek in his hand as his shoes squeaked across the floor, across the growing pool of blood from Maddie’s discarded body. “I didn’t mean—!”

“Shut up! I don’t give a shit what you meant,” Danny growled, foot pressing against his mother’s shoulder and turning her over. It was a shame how often the loops came to this point. She deserved better. “You always think this is going to work out, well spoilers Vladdie! It. Never. Does.”

Vlad shook, not understanding Daniel’s words or his tone or any of it, not understanding if he was having trouble keeping up because he had just killed the woman he loved or because something was wrong… something felt very, very wrong and his heartbeat ran a fever pitch in his ears as he was consumed with the desire to become as small as possible because when Daniel turned back to him his teeth were set in a too sharp smile. “Daniel…”

“You know, Vladimir, it really is a wonder I love you, even after all this time. It's a miracle that I put up with you, that I try for you, give everything I have for you.”

Daniel was stalking closer again and the aura he exuded spoke nothing of love, not that Vlad could comprehend why Daniel had said such a thing. His instincts were screaming at him, something old in the back of his brain, bundled tight at the base of his spine. It urged him to run, to hope that the hard slap and the bruise he could already feel forming across his face was all he’d received despite knowing that was a pipe dream.

Daniel’s eyes were acidic, green leaking through the blue to cast a glow about him that Vlad knew well, but not like this.

“W-What are you talking about?” He managed, his voice as thin as if Daniel’s finger’s had wrapped around his neck and Vlad was beginning to think that was a possibility. Why was he carrying on about trying for him, about giving everything he had for him? Didn’t he understand the gravity of what had just happened?

Jack had stumbled into his lab, been on the verge of finding out, at minimum, that he still researched ghosts, and he had snapped. Before he could even process what had happened Maddie was on him. Her own terror at seeing Jack had rendered her clumsy, but Vlad couldn’t remember all of the details. It had all moved so fast and shock had expanded like gunpowder behind his ribs. He knew he’d used his powers at some point, had lost himself in the understanding of what was happening and had gained an advantage and then her blood had been on him and she’d tensed, her whole body had stiffened like a board and, and...and—!

Danny snapped his fingers loudly, right up against Vlad’s face, “Focus!”

Vlad wrenched his eyes from her body, he hadn’t registered that he’d looked away from Daniel and now he was boring down onto him, looming far overhead and it fully sank in that he was caught in a trap, cornered and controlled and Daniel had no intention of letting him go. “I’m sorry! I—I didn’t think.. I didn’t mean to! This wasn’t supposed to happen!”

“You’d be surprised how often it does.”

Danny’d had enough of Vlad’s babbling, enough of his legs shifting nervously, his eyes staring up at him. He’d heard it all before, had listened to him cry as he was just starting to now, moisture pricking at the edges of his eye. Hell, he’d even accepted Vlad after one such instance, had given up and said fine, _'you want to kill my parents go ahead. I’ll still be here'_.

In the end nothing worked.

He knelt down, came face to face with Vlad and ancients how he wished this loop had gotten further. They hadn’t even reconciled yet, let alone touched. It had been a long time since they’d had a loop like that, one where they could be together, and Danny ached. He wanted to feel Vlad again, he missed it.

For now he settled on reaching out again, smoothing a few stray strands of Vlad’s silver hair from his face, tucking them delicately behind his ear, “I’ve told you before you know, told you all of it. Sometimes you call me crazy, sometimes you listen… but we’ve never managed to fix things. Most of the time it’s just easier keeping you in the dark.”

Danny knew Vlad had questions, he always had dozens, and he knew he was scared, but this Vlad, this version of him, had died the moment he’d attacked Jack. Danny held little sympathy for him now and he wasn’t in the mood to explain, after all, he’d been trying to nap.

A growing boy needed his rest.

He leaned forward, ghosting his lips ever so gently against Vlad’s own, “I’ll see you soon, okay? Try not to be so much of a disappointment next time around.”

The loop reset.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of Danny: I love Vlad very much uwu  
> Danny's actions: haha you’re quite stupid aren’t you Vlad?
> 
> Anyway! I hoped you liked! This chapter was meant to start kinda showing more of the like oof  
> Danny is uuuuh, not great in this fic


	5. Attempt 27: Log 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one made me uncomfortable to write so oops
> 
> Content warning:  
> -thoughts of self harm  
> \- abuse  
> \- definitely dubious consent, that’s less consent and more, this is the safest route  
> \- it’s not described in detail but yeah

  
The highway was a blur under Danny’s motorcycle, the twenty four year old leaning into a large, sharp curve in the road. He bent with it, legs tight around the body of the bike beneath him. The world shifted, tilting as wind whipped up and around his hair, painting it against the sky as the curve took him in with its gravity and Danny wondered, a laugh bursting wildly from his chest, what would happen if he bent over further. If he let the curve have him, let the asphalt concrete brush his skull, grind into his skin in a flat, skid mark cut until his brain smeared across the road, what would happen?

How long would it take him to heal? Would an ambulance come to get him or would he lay against the yellow and white lines until he could stand and walk home? Would he wake up in a body bag, in a hospital bed? Would he terrify the doctors or coroners?

How long would it take Vlad to come get him, to meet him in the space Danny had created, as gruesome as it was?

He wasn’t sure when it had happened, when his knowledge of what Vlad could be turned into a desire. He had learned years ago, back before the start, that Vlad had kindness in him and so he pursued it, trapped in these loops. Along the way that pursuit had grown deeper. His hands had wandered and he’d found Vlad’s hands wandering back.

The loop was good.

It was good and comforting and everything Danny wanted.

In a few months he’d turn twenty five and Dan would be set decidedly behind him. The loop would break and he’d be free and Vlad would still be there with him, with his kind eyes and knowing hands and that smirk Danny adored.

It would be easy.

Sure, it’d been a rough century, but he could put it aside. He could pack this part of his life away and finally, finally breathe. He could look forward to the next year, and the year after that and he wouldn’t have to worry.

There were things he regretted. Life wasn’t quite complete without guilt, but he had accepted what had happened and was moving on.

His husband didn’t know anything.

Despite his love for Vlad Danny had never felt right exposing him to it, to the previous few loops where things had gone horribly wrong, where he’d watched his family die, where he’d failed.

Trees passed by in a smattering of fall colors, bright reds, oranges, and yellows. The holiday season was just around the corner and Danny could almost taste the baked sweets Vlad would make in their kitchen.

Home came into sight a mere twenty minutes later and Danny parked out front of the Wisconsin Castle, bounding up the stairs to enter through the front door.

Vlad greeted him, arms wrapping around his waist, warm and smelling of cinnamon.

Danny grinned, “Someone’s been busy.”

“Just doing a bit of this and that, nothing major,” Vlad said and Danny leaned in to kiss a small smear of flour off Vlad’s cheek. It didn’t exactly taste good, but that wasn’t the point.

“Miss me?” He asked as they split apart just long enough for Vlad to close the door, their hands meeting as they walked back to the kitchen.

“It’s only been a few hours, love,” Vlad laughed as Cujo bounded into the room to jump up onto Danny’s leg and demand attention, “But yes. How was your ride?”

“Refreshing,” Danny said and he scratched Cujo behind the ears, his green tail shaking so hard his body vibrated along with him, nails skidding across the tile, “The colors on the trees are beautiful, it’s quite the view,” he looked back over to where Vlad had bent over to pull a tray out of the oven, the room quickly overwhelmed with the smell of cinnamon rolls, “speaking of which,” he set Cujo down gently and came up behind Vlad, fingers reaching to squeeze his ass appreciatively, “the view here is immaculate as well.”

Vlad laughed, “If you make me drop these rolls I’m going to have to kill you, you know that right?”

“I think it’s worth dying over.”

Vlad turned to him, careful not to touch him with the hot pan as he kissed his cheek, “That so, Phantom?”

It was so.

“Absolutely,” Danny responded, talking about far more than pestering Vlad while he baked, but Vlad didn’t know that.

His husband sat his tray down on the kitchen island and came fully into his arms. Danny pressed their foreheads together gently, feeling as much of Vlad as he could in the moment. “I love you, so, so much, you know that, Vlad?” He asked, aching for the months to fly by so the loop could break and all the worry he’d kept bundled up inside him could leak out.

Vlad pulled back, brushed a strand of hair from his face to tuck it behind his ear before cupping his cheek, “You’ve been thinking about it, haven’t you?”

Despite having not told Vlad about the loops the other halfa had memorized how to tell when he was thinking about them. On nights when Danny’s mind was filled with nightmares Vlad would hold him close, soothe the way he trembled and press him to his chest. Sometimes Vlad would ask what it was, what had plagued him for years and sent him into seemingly random depressive cycles, but Danny never answered and that had become the norm for them.

Vlad comforted something he didn’t understand, trying all he could to be there for him even though Danny knew it hurt him to think that there were some things Danny just wouldn’t share with him.

“Just a bit,” Danny said, soft as he tilted his head, burying his face in the gentle embrace of Vlad’s palm, “But it’s okay.”

It would be okay. Soon. Danny was counting down the days, seventy six to be exact.

That was one thousand eight hundred and twenty four hours.

He could survive that long. He had to.

“I wish…” Vlad began before drifting off and Danny knew he was going to say that he wished Danny would just tell him, but Danny never did so there wasn’t a point to the request and he couldn’t help the guilt that filled him as Vlad fell silent.

He was hurting Vlad and he hated that, he hated that Vlad wanted nothing more than to comfort him and all he could do was pull away.

“I’m sorry,” he said, arms wrapping tight around Vlad, wanting to block the entire world from him, to keep him close and shielded and happy. Vlad was a provider. Danny had been a touch surprised by this at first, but once Vlad latched on he desired little more than to give Danny anything and everything he could possibly need or want to ensure that Danny stayed with him. He was scared of being alone, of being left again, so he offered up all he could to keep their relationship secure.

But with this…. with this Danny wouldn’t, couldn’t, tell him what he needed so Vlad was left unable to provide.

“I’m here,” he murmured, knowing that things like this, these uncertainties, scared Vlad.

“I know,” Vlad said, voice strained.

“Soon, I’ll tell you soon, I promise,” Danny said, catching Vlad’s gaze and holding it steady as a flurry of emotions flickered across his expression. Danny had never, ever offered to tell before, but now, just a few months out he felt as if he could give Vlad that hope, could soothe his husband’s worries.

“When?” Vlad asked, disbelieving, pulling his hand from Danny’s face to hold his hands gently instead.

“The day after my birthday.”

He didn’t elaborate on the reasoning, didn’t delve into his motivations and thankfully Vlad didn’t ask him too.

* * *

The next few weeks consisted of their normal routines.

Vlad would head off to work while Danny stayed in the mansion doing whatever pleased him. He told himself that once the loop broke he’d bother with going to college, put some of the reading he’d done over the loops to good use, but he didn’t want to bother with it before he was freed. What was the point in sitting through classes when you’d just get reset?

Life was for living while he could, so he spent his days exploring, flying to cities he’d never visited and people watching. He convinced Vlad to come with him often, the pair traveling around the world.

The days were good and their bed was warm and filled with them, their hands and their legs and Danny indulged in as much of Vlad as he could get, memorizing his touch, but the nightmares were becoming more frequent.

As his birthday got closer he hardly slept, Vlad grew more and more agitated and concerned, his touches lingering nervously as Danny assured him he would be fine soon. Vlad held him close at night, begging him wordlessly to let him help, trying to rub down the jagged edges of the years with gentle touches.

When he did sleep he almost always awoke with a scream, clutching the bedsheets close to his chest, sweat beading on his forehead as he scrambled to the surface of wakefulness. Vlad was always there beside him, quick to soothe, to open his arms as Danny cried. He would kiss the tears away, lay awake with Danny murmuring soft things and running his fingers through his hair and Danny would tell him how many days they had left before they could talk about it.

In the end that day came all too fast.

* * *

The morning after Danny’s birthday.

* * *

“You _what_ ‽”

“I told you, I got stuck in a time loop!”

“Daniel, you didn’t _get_ _stuck_!”

“I did!” Danny argued, leaning across the bed. Vlad had asked him as soon as the sun had risen outside, had begged him to finally, finally tell him what memories had hounded him all these years and now Danny had told him everything. All of it, Danny had laid himself bare before the other halfa and Vlad was looking at him as if he were insane! “Why aren’t you listening‽”

“I am listening, Daniel! Do you hear yourself‽” Vlad yelled, panic searing across his mind because what Daniel had confessed to him… it wasn’t… it wasn’t—! He moved away from his husband, _his husband for ancient’s sake, he’d married Daniel_ , scrambling off the bed, hand over his mouth because he was going to be sick.

“Vlad!” Danny moved to follow after him but Vlad backed away further, shaking his head, eyes filled with tears and fear and Danny didn’t understand why. “C-Come on I… you, I was stuck! What choice did I have? Dan he, he had to be stopped!”

“Not like that.” Vlad said, looking around the room for something, anything to help him because Daniel was closing in and he’d panicked and reacted before he could think and Daniel had told him what had happened to the other versions of himself in the loops, “You… you killed me…”

“Only to make sure I got you right!” Why didn’t Vlad see that that was necessary? The loop would reset, of course he’d die, sort of. His consciousness got erased and like everyone in the world he reverted back to how he was on the day the loop always began, the day of the lab incident. “Making you right meant Dan couldn’t happen! And he didn’t! Look!”

Danny spread his arms out wide, showing himself off, “Dan didn’t happen! Dan’s not here, the loop is over, I’m older than he was, we can move on!”

Vlad tripped over a pair of discarded pants, they’d lost their clothes in a rush the night before and now the fabric had him sprawling to the floor and he shifted forms defensively because no, no Daniel was wrong, the loop wasn’t over, it never would be.

As long as Daniel existed the loop would live with him.

“That’s not… that’s not how it works Daniel as soon as you aren’t happy you’ll reset the l—”

“Why are you making such a big deal out of this‽ Aren’t you happy‽”

Vlad was, well, had been.

He didn’t know how he was supposed to be happy now and part of him screamed to say yes, to save himself and say yes, but the tears slipping down his cheeks told Daniel everything he needed to know, “W-Was any of this real? Did you actually love me?”

Danny’s face contorted harshly into an expression of anger and confusion, “Did I actually love you‽ What kind of bullshit is that‽ Of course I love you!” How could Vlad ask that? Vlad was his, the love of his life, lives, given the loops. Danny had worked so hard for him, had tried so many times to get him just right, wasn’t that love? Didn't Vlad see that Danny would ruin the entire world for him?

He knelt down and took Vlad’s face in his hands, holding him tight, “Fruitloop, I adore you, can’t you understand that? It’s over now, the loops are over and it’s okay because you’re mine and Dan is gone, that’s all we need.”

Vlad was shaking, staring up at his husband turned stranger. Everything had been a lie and Daniel was still lying to him, still trying to act like it was okay and it _wasn’t_. The touch of his hands on his cheeks felt repulsive. “How could you do that to _Clockwork_?”

“Sometimes sacrifices are necessary, you were, are, more important.” Danny said, soft, calm, trying to soothe Vlad. He’d come around, he’d see that Danny only had his best interests at heart. It wasn’t as if Vlad hadn’t displayed some possessive behaviors during their times together too after all. He knew the man had that side to him, the dark, needful, demanding side, “You’d have done the same.”

Vlad’s breath hitched in his throat, scraped like razor blades against the chasm of doubt and fear Daniel had formed inside him. The awful thing was, the truly horrible thing was, was that Daniel was right. Vlad would have done the same thing.

If he had to choose whether or not he could keep Daniel, in any capacity, he would have chosen Daniel every time and those thoughts were hungry and violent and Vlad wanted so badly to run with Daniel, to sink into his actions and words and just not care. And yet, he couldn’t.

What Daniel had done was _wrong_.

Beyond that Vlad couldn’t help but think of the other versions of himself, all of whom had gotten a one way ticket to the start of the loop when Daniel deemed them imperfect.

What was stopping Daniel from doing that whenever he wanted, he controlled when things restarted. He controlled who was and who wasn’t worthy of existing

Danny pushed Vlad back slowly, straddling him. Vlad was overwhelmed. He wasn’t thinking straight. So what if he had taken a bit of a messy path? Vlad wasn’t any better, Danny had seen him do some truly awful things, after all. Vlad had no room to talk, no room to protest, “You should be thankful that I worked so hard for you.” He cooed, hands lowering to run their way up Vlad’s bare chest. His husband just needed a reminder of all the rewards such hard work gained them. “That I love you so much that I would wait over and over for you.”

Vlad swallowed hard. He didn’t think he could be thankful if he tried but he had to try… he had to or Daniel would reset him, kill him in that way that erased his consciousness and sent him into pure nonexistence like some puppet for the other halfa to toy with.

Maybe Dan wasn’t here… but Daniel, the Daniel he’d thought he’d known wasn’t either.

For now he needed to stay safe, he needed to swallow it down and pray that he didn’t slip, that Daniel wouldn’t reset the loop, call him wrong, incorrect, messy, broken, or whatever else he’d named the other Vlads. His chest ached for all the other versions of himself, the ones that weren’t good enough for Daniel.

He wanted to cry for them, to shove Daniel off of him and ask him why… why they had deserved to die.

But he didn’t…

For now he needed to be safe, to be safe, to be safe.

For now he let Daniel push him down against the floor and when he touched him he pretended to like it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here’s where the story is supposed to be becoming a bit more clear  
> We're definitely going to see how the loops started, but as we get more and more of Vlad’s POV we're going to start seeing how unreliable of a narrator Danny really is  
> Namely how he says he's stuck in a time loop  
> But he's not


	6. Attempt: Null: Log 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We are back to before the loops began! 
> 
> Content warnings  
> \- brief mentions of self harm  
> \- depression 
> 
> Honestly this one is like not awful

The next few days passed in a fugue state. 

Danny’s world had collapsed in on itself, loud and all consuming, yet frustratingly distant from him, slipping between his fingers like boiling water, painful and fleeting. 

He had hoped sleep would be a respite, but he’d been wrong. Plagued by nightmares of Dan he found no comfort in the dark.

His friends and family were starting to notice and Danny managed to confide in Sam, Tucker, and Jazz how he wasn’t holding up as well as he had hoped. Yet, even then he wasn’t one hundred percent honest. There was only so much he felt strong enough to say and that fact only made him feel weaker. 

Sam and Tucker were shaken, but healing and Danny couldn’t understand how, but he desperately wanted to. 

Like a lot of things he ended up swallowing it down, pressing it back and into the wide cavernous spaces of himself. He drank energy drinks picked up from the local grocery store, pretended to listen when others spoke to him, and tried not to look too long at Jazz’s razor in the shower. 

It was… a little too easy and perhaps that’s what hurt the most. 

Despite how he covered it, despite how the idea of others finding out made him nauseous, the thought that they couldn’t see it, or even worse purposefully didn’t reach out, hurt. Danny told himself that this was hypocritical. If he wanted others to see how fucked up he was he would show them. He shouldn’t be hurt when he hid it from them. He hid it for a reason. 

The breaking point came a few months later. 

Spring was threatening Amity and things felt too real and sunny and Vlad had been quiet for a while but now he decided to stir up trouble. Maybe the changing of seasons had riled him up. Danny knew he wasn’t fond of the cold, maybe as the temperatures had risen he’d found himself wanting to stretch his legs and become a nuisance for the sheer feeling of it. 

It was a regular fight. 

Nothing particularly notable other than the end. 

Vlad had flung him about a few times and at first Danny matched his ferocity, but by the third time he’d slammed into a brick wall a sluggishness aided by his physical pain had set in.

Why was he doing this?

Why was he always fighting with Vlad over stupid, convoluted shit? What was the point? Why was Vlad like this?

Plasmius’ fingers had wrapped around his throat, the elder halfa on top of him the moment he’d faltered and for once as Danny’s hands had lifted to grip Vlad’s wrist angrily, to claw at his glove, he hadn’t quite understood why. 

What good did it do to fight if Vlad was just going to hit him again, if he was just going to come cause problems next Tuesday, or Wednesday, or whenever the fuck? Why did he work so hard not to look at Jazz’s razor in the shower when he knew he'd sneak back to it in the middle of the night? Why did he hurt when people believed his lies?

“Stop.”

His hands fell from Vlad’s wrist. He let his arms hang loose at his side and he went limp, passive, in Vlad’s grip.

Vlad shook him a bit as if he were a strung up fish caught from a lake, but Danny didn’t care.

“Stop.”

“Now, now, I’ve never seen you give up this easily, lit—”

“I said stop, Vlad.”

Vlad did, well, sort of. He stopped shaking Danny at least. 

“What?”

And just like that everything had unspooled. The narrative between them, the arch-nemesis ideals, the mutually understood hatred, it all evaporated into the air like dew on the new spring mornings around them.

Danny phased out of Vlad’s grip and in his confusion Vlad let him and he dropped to the ground. He changed back into a human and turned his back on the other man.

“I’m going home,” he informed, a nail in a coffin and one Vlad was quick to try and wrench away.

His footsteps dogged at Danny’s heels, following close behind on the cement. Danny felt rather than saw his transformation back into a human. 

“Daniel, what are y—”

“I’m done,” Danny said and he didn’t look back and he thought it was so hilariously desperate that Vlad kept following him like some lost stray dog down the street, “I’ve had enough. I’m done. I’m going home.”

“You can’t just do that.”

“Says who?”

“Well...I, you’re,” Vlad waved his hands around a bit, trying to express what he couldn’t with words.

“Your rival? Yeah well, not anymore. Go be evil or whatever, it’s your lucky break.”

“I’ll kill your father!”

“Heard that one before.”

“I’ll marry Maddie and you’ll be forced to move in with me a—”

“Be your son, whatever, cool, I do not care.”

Vlad stopped walking and Danny supposed he expected Danny to stop too, to turn around and say something dramatic and heartfelt, but Danny wasn’t in the mood.

What Danny hadn’t supposed was for Vlad to ask, all too softly, “Are you okay, Danny?”

That did stop Danny. Vlad hardly ever called him by his nickname and when he did it was almost always to tease. Now, said gently, it sounded wrong in his mouth, against his tongue. It sounded like a peach pit, cumbersome and obstructive. 

The answer was no. 

That part was easy enough, but saying it? And why would he want to say it to Vlad anyway? Why did, when he looked back, he feel this sudden urge to answer? Why did Vlad want to know? What did he care and why… why did his eyes say he already knew the answer and knew Danny wouldn’t tell him?

He looked all at once as he had in that mostly destroyed lab, ten years in the future, like someone who had said, once, just once, I’ll be kind.

I’ll be kind so take it and run because it’s all you’re ever going to get from me. Take your mile from my inch while you can. 

And so Danny did. 

“No, I’m not.” 

And it was painful and it felt good and his friends had stopped asking that question and they’d never looked quite as understanding when they had asked it in the first place. 

Vlad looked at him, stood there, just stood there at Danny and then he nodded, curt and quick before walking away. 

He left just like that. Just like Danny had wanted him too and there’d been no jabs, no teasing, no nothing. Vlad walked right out of sight with Danny frozen stock stiff to the ground, lost and somehow, somehow incomprehensibly lighter.

That’s how it began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys uwu  
> Hope everyone is well and safe <3  
> Sorry this one took a lil longer to put out, I am in grad school lol and I’m reading/ writing so much stuff oof 
> 
> Anyway hope you guys like this chapter, as always kudos and comments are much appreciated <3 love you guys!.


	7. Attempt: 487: Log 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back in the main loop for this fic Danny approaches Vlad for the first time only to learn some interesting information.
> 
> No major content warnings for this chapter.

Vlad typically fell asleep around 11:00 pm if he wasn’t having a bad night. If he was, well, then there was no telling when he’d pass out, most likely on his couch, bottles of alcohol strewn about haphazardly. But usually he tucked in at eleven and was out by twelve. 

He was a light sleeper and Danny couldn’t blame him. Halfa’s had sharper ears, keener senses, even small sounds felt big when he was laying in bed trying to let sleep take him. Ear plugs had never really helped either of them, had made them feel claustrophobic, too weak and exposed. Fans hadn’t helped, their droning had become the pounding of blood against their skull, the whine turning round and round behind their eyes. 

Even after all this time Danny found the sound of Vlad’s breathing to be the most comforting. 

He wanted it back, wanted his Vlad back. He wanted to press himself into Vlad’s arms and burrow and rest until he had glutted himself on sleep and the small kisses Vlad liked to pepper his cheeks with. 

It was midnight now and all the world was silent and empty and big. Danny felt small, he felt like a shadow as he stood there on the hill in the tall grass. He felt as if something was watching him, something far more unknown, panning away behind him, watching the wind muse his hair. 

He slipped forward, pressing his ecto-signature back to the core of him, quiet and undetectable. Entering through the front door Danny made sure to listen in for signs that Vlad was still awake, but he found none. He half expected Maddie to come down the stairs or appear from around a corner, but this Vlad hadn’t gotten her yet so she wasn’t there for Danny to pet her. 

Vlad’s house looked like it almost always did, there seemed to be a few differences here and there, there always were, but over all this appeared to be an average loop. There was Packers merch, a big library, and a lab, although the lab looked less sinister than Danny was used to, more like an actual lab that a sane scientist would use. Perhaps this Vlad was less messy. Danny could really go for a calmer, more collected version of the other halfa. 

Loop 486 had contained a particularly rough Vlad. 

Moving into Vlad’s room Danny saw him there, tucked up under the sheets. He had the comforter snuggled up under his chin for support as he curled on his side, hands gripping the fabric, hair mused and Danny melted. 

He looked just as lovely as ever, just as handsome and ethereal. Vlad always looked beautiful while sleeping, when his worry lines had smoothed and his eyebrows, so often pinched in frustration and anger, relaxed. Danny missed him, deeply, more than he had room for in his body. His longing stretched beyond the back of his throat where it always pooled, ducking down under his ribs, sliding down his stomach, and pushing through his legs and feet into the floor, out, out through the house and into the earth where it opened a chasm. His longing could split the earth, rend the core of it from its magma just as it ripped his core from his chest, raw and unwillingly exposed. 

Danny laid down in the bed beside him, intangible yet heavy with the tears and the years behind him. 

Please let this one be the one.

Please let the loops be over.

It was the prayer he spoke every time. The plea he offered up to the silence above him. 

He reached forward, hand brushing across Vlad’s cheek, tucking a few silver short hairs behind his ear. “I love you,” he whispered and he always, always meant it, even when the loops were rough and messy and devoid of hope. He had meant it for centuries and would mean it for centuries more as he desired nothing more than to settle, happy and easy into Vlad’s embrace. 

He wouldn’t officially meet Vlad for a few more months and that time felt like an eternity, let alone the years it would take to get Vlad to touch him properly. Vlad was always so picky about waiting till he was legal, as if he didn’t want to take over the earth or anything like that. Sometimes Danny wanted to ring his neck, but he’d figured out a few solid work arounds so he wasn’t as annoyed as he used to be. 

Pressing forward further Danny slipped inside Vlad, phased through him to overshadow the other halfa. It was a delicate process, one a hair’s length away from disaster at any moment. He couldn’t let their cores touch or risk forming Dan, but he also had to make sure Vlad didn’t wake up or a fight would follow and getting off on the wrong foot always hindered a loop’s progression. Vlad was a stubborn man and first impressions were not easily walked back on in his eyes. 

He poured himself into Vlad’s consciousness, let his mind spill from the glass container of his self and mix with Vlad, gently leaking into his mind and memories. 

The first thing Danny noticed was the lack of anger. Vlad’s teeth were not clenched, his hands didn’t feel prone to curling into fists. There was a distinct emptiness of hatred and a sorrow deeper than what Danny was accustomed to. There was self doubt and loathing. There was fear and regret and heartache… but there wasn’t anger, not truly, anyway. Vlad was bitter and frustrated, but looking through his mind Danny saw no murderous intentions towards his father, no desire for revenge or to steal his mother away. 

This Vlad had already let all of that go.

Why?

In all his times around this Vlad was the gentlest upon first contact. Danny immediately pressed deeper into him, needing answers. He rifled quickly through blurred memories and emotions like messily dragging his fingers through a filing cabinet until, among a myriad of emotions a source stuck out. Danny plucked it from Vlad’s mind, brought it close to him and was enveloped in the sounds of eighties music.

He looked through Vlad’s eyes, felt with his body the vibrations of the sounds around him and was immediately filled with knowledge. 

They, Jack, Maddie, and himself, had received a large grant for the lab. They could afford the equipment to start the proto portal properly, could take their calculations and blueprints and form them into a tangible reality. They were going to rip a hole in the fabric of existence and record it scientifically and it was going to change the world. They were going to change the world. 

There was a smile set on Vlad’s face, so wide it ached. He wondered to himself how many awards they’d win, definitely a Nobel or two for sure. There would be a whole new sector of science in the world, there would be the opportunity to teach others, to learn from others, to explore, to grow, to do all of it and more and he could be someone. He could be more than the boy with his delusional head stuck in the clouds like his parents told him he was, he wouldn't be a disappointment or the weird ghost kid. They wouldn’t be those crazy scientists. They’d be geniuses. They were geniuses and no one said it would be easy but a path was opening up for them and Vlad wanted to run along it. 

Maddie was dancing and so was Jack and the club was alive and they were celebrating and drinking and howling with laughter and there… there beneath the lights Vlad knew what he wanted more than anything, more than to see the Ghost Zone, and he knew he already had it.

Where typically Danny was used to Vlad’s eyes lingering on Maddie he found Vlad’s gaze brushing lovingly along both of his parents and in the memory Vlad thought maybe it was the alcohol only to then argue with himself that no, the three of them had both gotten much closer over the past few months. Eye contact and touches had started to linger, naps together had become a thing and then a common occurrence. Warm hands, both Maddie’s and Jack’s would slip through his hair as he worked, reminding him to eat, to drink water, and to rest. 

Maybe the alcohol, the music, and the giddy joy were the push, but the love had been there for a while now. 

Vlad stood and they looked at him with wide smiles before pulling him into a dance, pressed him happily between them.

Danny skipped through the rest, deciding he didn’t want to see his parents and Vlad spend the night tangled up in each other, but he did spare a few moments to see the morning after. 

The bed sheets were warm and comforting around Vlad and Jack had him scooped up under one arm, pressing him tightly to his chest. Maddie was in an identical position and their hands met and tangled over Jack’s heart, feeling the steady beat of it beneath their fingers. She smiled at him and Vlad smiled back as they both knew they’d be here a while. Jack liked to sleep in and neither of them wanted to disturb him or leave the comfort that was their naked bodies pressed close together. 

They spoke in warm whispers, sometimes drifting off for short moments while they listened to Jack breathe. At one point Vlad untangled his fingers from her’s and gently brushed some hair from her face, touch lingering on her cheek and she welcomed the contact with a smile that set Vlad’s heart on fire. 

Flickering through more memories Danny saw that the rest of their college days leading up to the incident had been similar. Vlad had been happy with both Jack and Maddie and so there was no murderous intent behind his lingering anger. 

Jack had saved Maddie, but Vlad couldn’t bring himself to see it as a betrayal. After all, he would have done the same and Maddie would have pushed one of them out of the way if she could have. He knew Jack loved him, it wasn’t as if he’d wanted him to get hurt. It’d been a stupid mistake. 

What came after had hurt worse. He didn’t know why the two people he loved most in the world had left him and there was anger and pain in that confusion, but there was also shame. He was a ghost now. They wouldn’t want him anyway. He’d convinced himself of it and so, believing that staying away was the best, he didn’t meddle with them. Despite everything he thought the most he could do for them was to leave them to their lives. He wasn’t meant to be in the picture, not as he was now, some freak of nature. 

Danny pulled away from Vlad, manifesting beside him once more on the bed, searching his expression as if there was something to find. 

How was he supposed to work with this? Sure this Vlad was calmer, far more docile than he was used to, but if he got close to Jack and Maddie then those feelings would flare up again and having already interacted with his parents for a short while in this loop he could tell they were fairly normal, meaning they’d likely reform their connections to Vlad if given the chance. 

In most loops Maddie didn’t want Vlad, but that didn’t seem to be the case here and now his dad was involved too. 

Danny suppressed a growl. 

This loop would be delicate. 

Although…

Danny felt a smile scrawl across his face a few minutes later, wide and sharp as an idea formed in his mind. It’d take time and effort, but it was wholly possible and it could yield a Vlad who was deeply tied to him. 

For now though he slipped back into Vlad’s mind and conjured up dreams of a college reunion where Vlad would have the opportunity to meet up with his long lost loves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!
> 
> Sorry it’s been a while since the last update, I went on vacation! I took a small break from writing to spend a good while having some me time ÙwÚ (which mostly involved shopping lol)   
> But I’m back home now and quarantining until I get some negative covid results lol.   
> I was safe fairly safe, but I absolutely gotta double check.  
> Speaking of which I hope all of y’all are safe as well <3
> 
> Oh and happy Valentine’s Day of course <3<3!
> 
> Also, >:3c I’m excited for Danny plan. However will he deal with a Vlad that’s crushing hard on both his parents.


	8. Attempt 487: Log 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is one of the longer chapters of this fic, we are back in loop 487 for Vlad and Danny's official first meeting. 
> 
> Content warning 
> 
> \- gore  
> \- abusive tendencies  
> \- heavy manipulation  
> \- partial perceived non-con, hard to explain just know there’s like some tense weirdly sexual bits during some other triggering material  
> \- Danny is giving Vlad suggestive thoughts about him while he’s physically underage. Vlad doesn’t act on them, but like Danny chill plz.

  
A few months later the Fenton house received a phone call. Danny knew who was on the other end of the line the moment his mother picked up the receiver.

Over the past few weeks he’d repeatedly visited Vlad in the night, filling him with both the desire to see Jack and Maddie again under the guise of a reunion and a growing worry that they would find out about his ghost half.

It was an easy enough operation, Vlad already harbored both emotions so they felt natural to him. He wanted to reunite with them, but he was terrified of the potential consequences if he wasn’t careful. From there Danny had merely insisted that Vlad was skilled enough to hide his halfa status. He’d been a ghost for two decades now, he had control of his powers. He could at the very least be friends with Jack and Maddie safely.

Vlad took these suggestions like an easily swallowed pill.

The fear was prominent, Danny made sure of that, but so was the confidence that the worst case scenario could be avoided.

Before he knew it he was in the back of the Fenton assault vehicle with Jazz as they drove to Vlad’s Wisconsin mansion. On the way there he made sure to ask about all the new technology they were making, nodding his head enthusiastically and pitching in as he worked them up. By the time they arrived in Wisconsin they were itching to go ghost hunting.

“What’s got you so interested in what mom and dad are doing?” Jazz asked as they stepped from the van, careful to keep her voice low.

“I figure the more I know, the safer I’ll be,” Danny answered. He already told Jazz he was a halfa. He’d discovered that it typically made things a bit easier to get it out of the way. As usual she had been overprotective and tried to help, but they'd gotten past that stage and Danny was glad for it, it put her in a good position for what came next.

Jazz nodded, “You’ll know what to look for, maybe how to break it.”

“Exactly.”

Jazz looked up at the castle in front of them, “What do you think he’s like?” She asked and he knew she was picturing the billionaire they sometimes heard about in the news, the mysterious, reclusive man their parents had been friends with long ago.

“No idea,” Danny lied.

Vlad answered the door and Danny barely suppressed a shiver. He wanted to run his fingers through Vlad’s hair. He wanted to pin him down, feel every inch of him, wanted to rip that damn stuffy suit of his off.

He could see the nerves in Vlad’s eyes, watched as his gaze flickered between Jack and Maddie, trying to figure out what to do with himself as he showed them around. Danny almost laughed, this Vlad felt like a newborn baby deer, shaky and unsure of himself. It was cute in its own way, although Danny wanted Vlad’s eyes on him and not his parents.

Soon enough.

The day went as expected, Vlad showed them their rooms and they had dinner. That night Danny sat close to Vlad on the couch as they watched a movie. There was an odd tension in the air from Vlad’s nerves, but it was nice knowing the other halfa wasn’t having murderous thoughts.

Danny made sure to invade Vlad’s space as much as possible, reaching over him to snatch the remote and turn the t.v up, bumping their hands on ‘accident’ in the popcorn bowl, asking Vlad to pass him his drink or candy. Small contact went a long way and so did side eye glances he made sure Vlad saw.

After everyone had gone to bed Danny overshadowed Vlad again, filling his mind with thoughts of how his body had felt across his as he’d reached for things during the movie, how he had both Jack and Maddie’s features, how he’d held good conversations. Danny knew from experience that the dreams would leave Vlad feeling slimy and ashamed of himself, but they were a necessity.

The next day was the reunion and Danny allowed himself to sleep in. In this loop Vlad didn’t have a need for his vultures and so did not employ them. Beyond his escapades polluting Vlad’s mind with suggestive thoughts and then taking some time to visit with his parents ghost tech Danny had slept well.

That was good, this is where things were slated to get a touch hectic.

Danny glanced around the ballroom, taking stock of the guests. They weren’t necessarily involved in this but it was important to know what was going on at all times, one hair out of place could mean getting shoved into loop 488 and he didn’t want that.

Things were average, smooth. Vlad was avoiding him. Danny knew why, he could see it in his eyes. Poor thing couldn’t stop thinking about his dreams the night before. Danny hadn’t even made them that lecherous, he’d crank up the heat in due time.

Danny moved to leave his seat by the buffet spread and wandered to the nearest bathroom, pretending to look about for it in case Vlad ever checked his cameras to go over what was about to happen. The act was one that could never be fully dropped and Danny was sure to pretend he was having a smidge of trouble finding where to go in the ostentatious building. When he got to the bathroom he created two invisible clones. Sending them away to set off his parents' devices.

He looked at himself in the mirror as he did, tilting his chin. He should grow a beard this loop, it’d been a while. He glanced into his eyes, attempting to press the knowledge hidden there back. That was always the hardest part. Vlad was keen, he knew the heart of a person lay in their eyes and he watched intently as they spoke to pick up signals that they knew more than they let on, whether or not they were telling the truth, or what they were thinking. Keeping such info from his expressions had been maddeningly difficult at first and it still wasn’t a cake walk, but it got easier every time.

Leaving the bathroom he wandered back to the ballroom, peaking into a few rooms like most curious teens would on his way back. He waited for nearly two hours before he switched places with a clone, eating and drinking punch. He and his second clone moved in, ecto signatures suppressed enough to evade Vlad’s immediate senses but set off his parent’s equipment.

Riled up from Danny’s discussions with them and Vlad’s mentions that the Dairy King still haunted the halls his parents were quick to pull out their weapons and begin the hunt. Danny hid a small smile as Vlad trailed behind them, the man trying to be sneaky.

He led them in opposite directions, drawing Vlad away from the crowd to find who had invaded his carefully guarded territory. His second clone strung his parents along and his first complained to Jazz that he hoped the ghost their parents were following was just the Dairy King because he wasn’t in the mood to fight after such a long drive the day before.

Remaining invisible Danny watched as Vlad transformed into Plasmius as soon as the other halfa was sure Jack and Maddie wouldn’t see him.

“I don’t know who you are but you need to leave, this is my haunt,” he ground out and Danny snickered at how unpracticed the command felt, what sort of cheesy ghost actively called it a haunt? He knew this Vlad had interacted less with ghosts than Danny was used to but the way he tried to appear domineering was lackluster. Or perhaps Danny had merely grown far too accustomed to his overdramatic behaviors.

Danny didn’t say anything, he wanted to, he wanted to tease Vlad, rile him up a bit, he always looked good mad, but speaking came with the risk of Vlad recognizing his voice so it was out of the question. Danny didn’t like messes, he liked his plans nice and clean, in the lines. Perfect.

He threw a vase at Vlad and the man shattered it with a ghost ray, “Was that really necessary?”

Absolutely, his mind supplied, throwing a few more items to distract Vlad. He didn’t do anything big. He didn’t want to give Vlad a glimpse at his true powers, if anything it was best that Vlad thought he was some low level spirit in the mood to cause a bit of mischief and nothing more.

The distraction worked well, Vlad growing increasingly frustrated as Danny made a mess of his hallways and a few rooms. Vlad chased him, blasting ghost rays that scorched the wood flooring and turned a few books in a reading room to ash.

Danny rounded a corner, leaving the trail of destruction behind him, easily weaving through Vlad’s attacks

“There it is!” Maddie was the first to speak up as Danny closed the trap around him, leading the three of them to each other in a wide open hallway. The floor was lined with Vlad’s typically extra long red rug and the windows let in the light from the night sky outside. Vlad, in his usual vampiric get up, looked positively threatening against the backdrop of his own home.

Vlad froze, pursuit of the intruder forgotten as his eyes met Jack and Maddie’s, swallowing hard. He’d told himself he wasn’t going to let them see Plasmius let alone find out what he was, yet here they were staring up at him and taking aim.

If they caught him, if they found out — Vlad couldn’t risk it.

He turned intangible, fear tightening around his neck as Maddie’s words wrung in his ears.

 _It_.

She’d called him, it.

He wasn’t himself, Plasmius wasn’t worthy of any other marker and he knew that if they found out his secret Vlad wouldn’t be either. He wouldn’t be their ex-friend, ex-lover, ex anything, he’d simply be, it.

A ghost, a monster, a freak.

He couldn’t have that. Vlad had worked so hard to buck up the nerves to convince himself that this reunion could happen, he wasn’t about to let it crumble, let it press in on him and ruin the scraps of a life he was finally trying to pull together.

Confrontation was out of the question. The spirit roaming his halls, tossing books and vases about, could be dealt with later. For now he needed to run, hide, and shift back into his human self. He didn’t want to have to fight Jack and Maddie anyway.

Unfortunately the pair were hot on his heels, the gun in Jack’s hand whirling to life the moment he turned invisible, shooting out a beam of energy that caught him in the right shoulder. He stifled a cry at the pain that seared through him, at the heat that melted his suit into his skin and left a wide, aching skid mark. His left hand flew to the burn, pressing down with a wince that had his teeth clenching. He hadn’t thought Jack and Maddie had managed to invent weapons this powerful. The ones they had shown him the night before over dinner hadn’t seemed capable of inflicting the amount of damage they now caused.

Danny frowned, his dad’s finger twitching against the trigger of the gun as he overshadowed his body. Typically they wouldn’t be strong enough to capture Plasmius, but a little help from him could go a long way. He’d taken control of them the moment they’d skidded into the hallway, although Maddie calling Vlad ‘it’ had been all her and he had to thank her for that. He knew how much Vlad despised being dehumanized.

Keeping someone conscious during possession was a bit tricky and even he couldn’t do it for long, but Danny knew he only needed to nudge his parents' a few times. The gun in Jack’s hand whirled back to life and Vlad, stunned by the power the weapon boasted hesitated just long enough to get hit again.

He felt his dad’s joy and excitement as it rushed through him, as he felt the weapon shoot with power he hadn’t known was there because he hadn’t been the one to give it such capacity. Danny had. He’d asked his parents about their weapons and upgraded them, ensuring they could take down prey of Plasmius’ rank.

A place for everything and everything in its place, each detail accounted for.

With his mere suggestive control over his mother he had her rushing forward to where Vlad had ceased to be intangible, arm outstretched as she reared back and threw a large net with the aid of a contraption strapped to her back.

Vlad gagged on ectoplasm as Jack hit him the second time. Why were they so fast? He knew they had some experience as ghost hunters, but they’d seemed to be the types to bumble about the night before. Had he misjudged them? Did he think so poorly of them that he couldn’t see their strengths? The idea that he had underestimated them stung in its own right, painted him as only further detached from his past friends.

He was sent tumbling to the mansion floor, his suit ripped across his midsection, pink ectoplasm smearing from the hole Jack had torn in his side. His instincts urged him to look down, to assess the damage, but he swallowed back the desire, gathering the energy about himself to teleport. He should have done that to begin with and he knew he’d berate himself later for making such a stupid mistake.

Vlad took a deep breath in, the action aching in his lungs, pulling the skin tight around the wound in his stomach and disap—electricity sparked around him, cascading in an arc of sparks and incessant pops, radiating across his form, landing first and foremost on his back which bowed in a silent scream. The sound of it filled his ears, Maddie’s net engulfing him. It sounded like thousands of stun guns going off at once and he could smell the ozone and his flesh through the pain of it.

How teeth clamped down hard, shredding through his tongue, but that was the least of his worries as a thermos was shoved in his face. It felt like what being caught in a black hole would feel like, like being wrung out in a taffy puller. Vlad stretched, arms and legs spirling, ligaments pulling as if to snap but the break never came. Instead his body was contorted in fashions unnatural even for him as he was swept up and into the thermos.

His hands scrabbled uselessly at the edge of the light as it pulled him in, pressing him down into the container with a strength that left him frightened with its unnatural edge. It was something he couldn’t place, an ache of power that seemed out of Jack and Maddie’s grasp and even having wondered if he had underestimated them Vlad knew this couldn’t be their doing alone.

It felt far too old.

The pressure of this power was a cloak over his back, a weight that draped possessively over his shoulders and buzzed between his ears like the pop of radio static. For a moment, a sliver of a second, the power felt familiar.

Then the sensation was gone and darkness rushed into the light’s place, devouring it as the thermos was sealed with Vlad trapped inside.

Fear filled him anew, a choking slide that pulled from his throat and down into his lungs. Now smaller than ever before Vlad shoved at the darkness, his hands meeting solid walls, or perhaps the ground, direction was a vague thing in his containment. He pulled back, striking the spot over and over again, trying his best to do as much damage to a single area, to create a weak spot in the hull, but he felt weaker each time he collided against the thermos.

Vlad sunk down, weariness seeping into his bones. He let out a wheezing breath, fingers curling in on themselves as he bent over, placed his head between his knees. His eyelids burned heavy, drug down and he shuddered as the thermos pulled at his core. His head swam, thoughts cutting in and out until he was swallowed completely, his desperation falling away to nothingness.

* * *

Danny watched as Vlad was captured, waiting a few seconds to make sure that he didn’t escape. It was unlikely that he would, even a regular Fenton thermos was powerful enough to contain halfas. Danny knew from experience.

Making his way back to his clones Danny singularized himself, knowing that his parents would return to the party when they found they couldn’t pick up any more signals and as if running on a well wound clock they appeared a few minutes later.

“Hey Danno have you seen V-Man?” His dad asked, clasping his hand over his shoulder as Danny picked at a cheese board that was spread across the buffet table.

“Mm, no, why?” He said, wishing Vlad had set some wine out, but oh well it wasn’t like he couldn’t just steal some from the man’s supply later.

“We have to go. We just caught the ghost that was wandering around. Well, one of them, it’s real strong looking.”

Danny turned to him, eyes wide, “Seriously? What does it look like?”

His dad launched into a speech about the blue vampire, ushering Danny and Jazz away from the main ballroom to go get their things and meet up with their mom who had already packed up and gone to the assault vehicle to watch over the thermos.

“Who do you think they caught?” Jazz asked as they went to their rooms, their Dad leaving them to their packing. “Have you ever heard of a blue vampire?”

Danny shook his head, “I haven’t, but you heard dad, whoever they were they seemed strong.”

Jazz sat down on Danny’s guest bed. She hadn’t brought much along with her and had scooped her belongings up from her room quickly so they could continue the conversation with what fleeting privacy they had. “What are you going to do?”

Danny looked down at the white and red shirt in his hands, folding it gently and setting it into his suitcase, fingers running over the fabric, “I don’t know.” He lied, pausing as if to think. Like Vlad Jazz was one of the harder people to act around, he had to keep his mannerisms just so. He pinched his eyebrows, tightened his jaw, “I’d say I’d steal the thermos and let the ghost out into the Zone once we arrived home, but I don’t know if they’ll take their eyes off it. I…” He trailed off, rubbing a hand worriedly over his chest to lead Jazz along in the conversation.

“Do you think they’ll experiment on it?” She said, quiet as if not to scare Danny and he nodded.

“They’ve never caught someone like this Jazz and I… sure most of the ghosts I run into are jerks but I… Jazz what if it was me?”

“It won’t be Danny,” She tried to reassure, but her voice came out weak and filled with the doubt she wouldn’t confess to outright. “If you told mom and da—”

“How do you know that? How do you know they wouldn’t strap me to the lab table like they probably want to do with whoever they just caught?”

Jazz didn’t answer and when Danny looked at her he could see the pain in her eyes as her fingers tightened around the strap of the backpack she had brought.

“I dreamed about it again last night,” he said, voice barely above a whisper in the tense atmosphere he’d created.

Her gaze caught his and she swallowed hard, the muscles in her neck standing out for a short second.

“I can’t risk it… I want to help whoever is in that thermos, but I can’t risk it… does that make me selfish that I—” Danny let his breath scrape over the lump he’d allowed to form in his throat, crocodile tears blurring his eyes, “I want to be a hero, but how can I call myself that if the thought of going into the lab makes me feel like this? What if they get hurt and I can’t help them?”

Jazz, protective and mothering as ever stood and smothered him in a tight hug, “Danny, that doesn’t make you any less of a hero, but more than that it doesn’t make you selfish or any less good. You’re fourteen, no one can expect you to face that sort of thing.”

She was right in a way… or at least she would have been loops and loops ago. He’d been far too young to be exposed to the things he’d seen and experienced.  
Fourteen was nothing. Fourteen was so, so long ago. Danny couldn’t even imagine it anymore, being so young and fragile and scared. He would ask himself how he’d managed, how he’d coped, but he knew the truth.

He hadn’t.

“I am, I’m selfish…” he repeated, shaking his head, letting a shudder roll over him, “That ghost is going to get hurt and it’s my fault. I didn’t think they’d catch someone, their weapons didn’t look ready when dad showed them to me. I was being so stupid.”

“It is not your fault and you are not stupid, do you understand me?”

Danny mumbled a quiet “Yeah,” a few minutes later and Jazz’s hands were warm on his back, rubbing in a circle Danny knew well as she continued to try and soothe him until he reigned his sobs in and pretended to shake off his fear, “We should go,” he said, pulling away gently, giving her the space to pull him back if she chose to take it.

She let him go and the both of them finished their packing in a stiff silence, heading down to the van where their parents were waiting. As they approached he could hear them fretting over if they should keep searching for Vlad. His dad must have looked a bit more while they were packing, but he'd turned up empty handed. His mom’s fingers tightened around the thermos in her grasp.

With a quietly made clone Danny directed them into the car, skirting the line of possession once more. He had places to be and things to do, they could reach out to Vlad later anyway, he’d understand. He didn’t hang around them anymore, but he still understood that getting a dangerous ghost away from civilians was a good call and so was doing research when the opportunity presented itself. He’d forgive them for their rude behavior of leaving early.

They took the suggestions in and their conversation turned towards getting home as soon as possible, Danny leading them on practiced strings. Controlling the loop this much was tedious, but he knew it would pay off so he kept focused as they drove away from the Wisconsin mansion that felt more like home than FentonWorks anymore.

Danny watched it disappear behind them, engulfed in the trees of his and Vlad’s estate and felt a longing bubble up in his chest. He wanted to sink back into the sheets in the master bedroom and rest, wanted to feel the heated tile floors under his feet and relax in the ridiculously large tubs, fill the water with bubbles and drink a nice wine while Vlad carried on about business or science or anything really.

He turned back, eyeing the thermos that his mom had locked away in one of the vehicle's containment chambers for safe keeping. He’d have those things soon enough.

* * *

  
A few hours later they were home and Danny’s parents took the thermos down to the lab. Jazz asked them if they were going to release the ghost, but they shook their heads.

This was far too important a catch, they needed to study it, if only for a little while. Ectoplasm samples were quick to decay and denature.

Jazz shot him a worried look and he quietly shook his head, “Well, I know I’m tired from the drive, what about you, Danny?” She asked and he nearly groaned. Her acting never got any better.

“Yeah I was going to head to bed,” he said as they walked through the door, moving to linger on the stairs.

“You sure you don’t want to watch?” His mom asked and Danny tightened his fingers just a touch on the stair’s railing so Jazz could see his hidden stress.

“I’m beat, but you’ll record it right?”

His dad nodded enthusiastically, “Of course, that’s part of being good scientists!” Danny could practically see him vibrating with excitement at having such a nice specimen to work with.

“I’ll see it later then,” Danny smiled, just barely letting it reach his eyes.

With that he and Jazz were left to head up to their rooms, Jazz quick to encroach on his space. Danny took a few false steadying breaths.

“They’re going to hurt them.”

“I know,” Jazz said, trying to place her hand on his shoulder, but he shook it off.

“Why didn’t I go see who they were chasing after?” His voice came out thin with guilt as he stressed that line of thinking once more.

“You didn’t know,” Jazz answered, coming around to face Danny, but he didn’t look up at her, he needed to drag this out just enough.

* * *

When Vlad woke up he was strapped to a table, it was cold under him, the bite of the metal seeping through his cape and tunic.

He wasn’t sure how he had gotten there, wasn’t sure when he’d been let loose from the thermos. One moment the darkness had swallowed him up and the next he had found himself in the Fenton’s basement as if no time had passed at all. He pulled at his core, finding himself drained and tired, his head filled with sand as he longed to fall asleep once more. He could maintain his form, but even that felt different, unnatural and sticky in an odd sort of way that left his mind grasping at unseen straws.

He could hear Jack and Maddie’s voices above him and before he could stop himself a low hum rang in his throat, the sort he’d used to give on mornings when the sun was drifting in the window over Jack’s warm bed, the three of them curled together. It was the sound of home and quiet contentment. This could be a nice dream.

But it wasn’t the sun that caught his eyes and the table beneath him was far from rumpled sheets.

The overhead light was garish, glaring down at him as Maddie came into view, her goggles reflecting the light until she looked practically alien. She was still beautiful, even here and Vlad took a moment to take in where he was and the odd sensations wracking his frame.

He was connected to something, it pressed into his neck and if he thought about it he was sure he could taste some sort of syrup, although that might have been his imagination. He tilted his head and sure enough a needle was shoved into his throat, he could feel the iv line of it tug as he shifted, “Wha—”

“We’ve got you on a stabilizer just to be sure you don’t try to turn intangible or disintegrate yourself or some other nasty trick.” Maddie explained and Vlad furrowed his brows just a touch, trying to think around the odd concoction.

The syrup was in his brain too, he felt painfully sluggish, like everything was happening in a state of half dreaming where he couldn’t get his limbs to move right. “Maddie?”

“How do you know my name?” She asked and he tried to answer but his tongue felt fat and sticky in his mouth, like a dead sea slug washed ashore.

Did he even want to answer?

The thought bubbled to the soupy surface of his mind and he shook his head slowly. No, no he didn’t want that. He wasn’t sure why though. His eyes drifted closed only for a heavy jolt to wrack through him, making him flinch and startle back to pseudo-wakefulness as electricity coursed through his body. He opened his mouth and he was sure he screamed but he couldn’t quite register it.

“There there,” Maddie cooed and a hand drifted across his face as his fangs bared themselves instinctively, “I know it's hard to focus with the stabilizer, but you need to stay awake for us, do you think you can do that?”

“No…” he mumbled, unsure if he could and also not sure why he wanted to, but something about her voice was so inviting and a memory of her coaxing him so gently in their dorm room spilled over to the forefront of his consciousness. Maddie used to be so nice if he was good, if he did what she said and her hands were so soft and— “Where’s Jack?”

Where was Jack? He was supposed to be here right? His chest was so warm and so broad and if Maddie was touching him he wanted him to be there and hold him and encourage him.

“I’ll be good,” he promised, quietly and maybe they were playing a game, they’d talked about it before, getting rougher, maybe he’d just forgotten.

“You will?” Maddie asked and he nodded and then mumbled yet again—

“Where’s Jack?”

“He’s here,” she reassured and Vlad sighed because that was good and then Jack’s form was above him beside her and he smiled, drunk on the medicine and sleepy, but he wouldn’t sleep because he was good and they were playing and everything was fine and he was safe.

He laughed a bit and they tilted their heads above him and they looked so silly. He probably shouldn’t laugh it would ruin the mood and oh goodness, had they bought LSD from that rather fascinating R.A five doors down? Vlad knew he sold it, he’d seen it before and they weren’t really the type to buy drugs, but hey you only live once, right?

“What are you laughing about?” Jack said and it sounded, mmmm just a bit too harsh and it only made Vlad laugh more.

“You should let Maddie do the threatening. She's always been better at it,” he teased and then stopped for a moment to wonder why they didn’t sound so giddy and sleepy too. His eyes closed again and Vlad supposed he’d been out for too long because he was jolted back with another pulse of electricity, “I’m up! I’m good,” he promised then laughed again, “I’m a good boy.”

Why hadn’t they done this sooner? It was fun and oh Maddie looked so good in that lab outfit and Vlad hadn’t known he’d like it but he did.

“Think you can answer our questions?” Maddie asked and Vlad nodded again.

“Oh absolutely,” he said, well, tried to. He fumbled a bit and then frowned because another thought tried to drag it’s way into his mind’s eye.

He couldn’t remember the safe word.

“Quick question,” he asked and when they didn't answer he just went ahead with it, “What’s the safe word?”

“Funny.” Maddie said and Vlad frowned.

“That’s a weird safe word.”

Jack’s hand’s were on him then, tugging at the belt on his tunic and he shivered. Yes, clothes off! Clothes off was good! He tried to lift himself up, to help Jack pull his pants off too, but his legs were tied down and he whined a bit. They’d really gone all out hadn’t they?

“No fair,” he said, arching up into Jack’s touch as his shirt was lifted to expose his stomach and chest and then Jack was moving away far too fast as if recoiling from him.

“Disgusting,” Jack said and the word sounded beyond wrong in his mouth. It sounded as if he spoke around cheeks full of marbles, gargled and inhuman. He sounded cold and cruel and Vlad flinched.

“It’s aroused?” Maddie sneered and the disdain in her voice was too much for him.

_It_

The word scrapped up against him, steel wool to the inside of his lungs. He shivered again, this time ashamed and he moved to try and cover himself only to find his arms tied too. Was he not supposed to be aroused?

Wasn’t it the point that he had fun? That they had fun?

“I don’t like that…” he said, nearly whimpered, “Funny,” he tried as he began to think that perhaps there wasn’t a safe word after all.

“Seems like you do, spook,” Jack said and Vlad wanted to curl in on himself as a panic began to wheedle its way into his system because something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

He tilted his head and felt the needle in his neck again and what had Maddie called it?

A stabilizer.

Not LSD from that R.A… Randy, Vlad was sure that was his name. Yes, Randel Broussard.

“I’m not a…” he tried to say spook but his mind fumbled and he shook because he knew that was a lie and he’d promised to be good and yet… “This isn’t good…”

No it certainly wasn’t and the panic inside of him, the panic he couldn’t quite identify the source for was expanding and he was breathing harshly now, ribs flexing with the rapid movement. He didn’t want to be tied down anymore.

“Funny,” he tried again and they had never ignored him when he’d said they had crossed a line, but they did so now, although it wasn’t him they were really ignoring, was it?

He blinked, looked down at himself and seized up. He was blue… he was Plasmius, he was Plasmius and this was Jack and Maddie’s lab and Maddie had something in her hands that glinted in the glare overhead light. Reality clicked into place and his face burned with mortification and fear and he pushed against his bindings, “S-Stop!”

“Finally waking up, hm?” Maddie asked and he was left trembling, blinking back quick tears as the knowledge of what was about to happen filled him to the brim. He tried to push his feet up, catch his heels under him and scoot off the table but he couldn't, the sound of the metal shaking under him grating at his ears. His hands clenched as he tried to flex his body yet again against the restraints, attempting to turn intangible or teleport, or anything, but as Maddie had said, he’d been stabilized, trapped in his current form for the foreseeable future.

Vlad turned his head from side to side quickly, looking for something, anything to aid in his escape and there, there at the top of the stairwell he saw him, Daniel.

“Da—” he tried to call out, but then Maddie was sliding the metal in her hand against his stomach and Vlad knew it was a scalpel but he couldn’t form the word as it split him open, bright pink welling garishly to the surface.

He cried out, screamed at the sensation and moved to clench his eyes, but not before he caught the terror in Daniel’s expression, the pure, all consuming horror. The boy’s hand flew to his mouth and he seemed to gag, to press back the vomit Vlad knew must have been there at having seen his mother move to flay him like some deer shot in the woods, prepped for dressing.

And then he was gone.

Just like that Daniel was _gone_.

He didn’t flee up the stairs and even in his pain, mind addled with the drugs, Vlad knew he wasn’t mistaken.

Daniel had vanished into thin air, as clear as day, there one moment and gone the next and Vlad’s mind spiraled because humans couldn’t do that.

* * *

Danny reappeared in Jazz’s room, clutching one hand to his mouth and another to his stomach, pale as a sheet.

“Danny!” Jazz was there the instant he appeared and he waved her off as if to demand space as he began pacing in a tight circle, shaking.

“J-Jazz… Jazz they, I… I tried to go down to help and they Jazz… I saw it…Jazz!”

He moved his hands up to scramble them through his hair, letting his cheeks heat until the tips of his ears burned and the blood spilled down over his chest which stuttered and quaked.

“Danny it’s okay, you’re here, not there, it’s oka—”

“It’s not!” He nearly screamed, quiet enough so their parents wouldn’t hear, but loud enough to startle her. If he wasn’t so worried about alerting their parents he would have thrown something, that was always a good way to worry or frighten her. It was quick and to the point.

Jazz may have been difficult to act in front of, but once you drew her in she fell fast, no overshadowing needed. Once she thought her assessment was correct she wouldn’t budge from it. She was stubborn in a way she hardly ever admitted to and Danny could help but appreciate how steadfast she could be, if rather bullheaded.

“There was ectoplasm Jazz! Everywhere! And they begged mom and dad to stop but they wouldn’t! What if that was me!?”

“It’s not, Danny,” she said, trying to approach again and this time he didn’t stop her as he struggled weakly before breaking out into full sobs.

“They were… Jazz they were giving them something so they couldn’t become intangible w-what if that made it to where I couldn’t shift back into a human… you know they won’t listen to ghosts, they wouldn’t stop if it were me they wouldn’t stop…”

* * *

  
They wouldn’t stop.

Jack and Maddie had pulled his skin back from his stomach and chest, clamped it back with needles and clips and they wouldn’t stop.

Vlad’s throat burned with his screams and tears choked his nose and stole his sight.

“Why are you trying so hard?” Maddie asked and he didn’t have an answer, “Why bother making your insides look human?”

He grit his teeth as she reached into him, curling her fingers around his liver or perhaps it was his spleen, it didn’t really matter and pretending as if he had any sort of grasp on the situation took far more brain power than it was worth. He jolted as she squeezed, tasted iron and heady acrid slick at the back of his throat, head falling limp against the table that was drenched in his sweat.

A moment later electricity spiked through him and when his eyes opened again he found that Maddie had let go of him and he’d been electrocuted again. The sensation coursed along him, muddied with the exposure of his body.

“You said you’d be good, you said you’d answer our questions,” she started, and Jack handed her a pair of pliers, “So again, why do you bother to make your insides look so human?” The pliers were set against one of his ribs and he looked at her, panicked at the implication, begging her not to.

“I-I don’t know it’s just like that!” He managed, trying to shrink himself down and away from her, to will himself to phase through the table.

The teeth of the pliers wrapped around his bone, pressing down and Maddie had always been strong, but he couldn’t appreciate that now, not as his rib crumbled under the pressure she exerted. Vlad kicked as much as he could, screamed and clawed at the examination table until his claws broke and his fingers smeared with ectoplasm.

“Stop!” He begged again and again, but she didn’t and Vlad knew she wouldn’t but it still hurt in a way the pliers couldn’t hope to replicate.

He faded back to black only to be jolted once more into violent wakefulness moments later just as soon as Maddie had pulled far enough away from him to avoid shocking herself.

“Why do you make yourself look human?” She asked and it began again.

* * *

  
Eventually it ended as Vlad assumed all things had to. Jack and Maddie being human grew tired of toying with him after a few hours, deciding to call it a night. They set aside their tools and checked to make sure there was enough stabilizer to get him through the night. Washing in and out of consciousness Vlad heard them say they wanted to see how much he could heal on his own with the stabilizer interfering with his natural functions. They undid the clamps holding his skin in place, but otherwise left him flayed open and terribly bare in the now too cold room.

They left him without so much as a second glance and Vlad skimmed across dreams and half formed thoughts, the ache of his organs on display too much to contain and yet he did because he had no choice but to. He hadn’t known his organs could itch, yet there they were drying and flaking and infuriatingly itchy in the lab air.

A while later he heard something, a soft sort of shuffling, and tilting his head to follow the sound he found Daniel, just as wide eyed as before but coming closer.

Vlad growled, low and inhuman, fangs on full display to warn him off. He didn’t know what the boy’s intentions were and he knew he had fled before, but his body was in defensive mode, cornered and aching to snap.

Daniel held up his hands, looked furtively behind him then held one single finger to his lips, “Easy…” he whispered as if Vlad was some sort of spooked horse and if he’d had the energy he would have been offended, “I’m going to get you out of here.”

“You’re what?” Vlad managed, eyes narrowing as Daniel slowly walked closer, hands lifting to Vlad’s right leg and carefully undoing the restraint there.

“Letting you go, please don’t freak out, please don’t attack them, they don’t know what they’re doing…. I, they don’t mean it, they don’t know we actually think and feel an—”

“We?” Vlad asked, staring down at Daniel and shifting his leg just slightly. Daniel eyed the motion warily, but Vlad couldn’t have moved it more if he tried. He’d lost so much ectoplasm that everything from his hips down was numb and his arms weren’t much better, his flesh encased in pins and needles.

Danny glanced up at Vlad and smiled, soft and slow like he knew Vlad always liked, like he was looking into the whole of the other halfa as he let his rings light up around him, engulfing him in energy until he stood beside the table as Phantom.

He’d passed out.

Vlad knew he must have as he watched all too familiar rings phase around Daniel to leave him glowing softly in the lab, strands of white hair bobbing as if affected by only half of earth’s gravity, bright green eyes looking down at him sheepishly. His breath hitched for just a moment as he thought Daniel looked ethereal, only to remember with a burning shame the oddly tense dreams he’d had the night before, the ones where Daniel had leaned so close to him.

This was a dream too and he hated himself for the seemingly random fixation his mind had towards the teen, especially now that he was imagining he wasn’t alone, that there could even be a creature like him.

“I’m sort of a ghost too,” Danny said, knowing Vlad thought he wasn’t seeing straight or was hallucinating or something along those lines, but it didn’t matter, his plan was clicking into place, “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you sooner… I saw what they were doing and I got scared. I dream all the time that they’ll do this to me and I know you must hate me for leaving you, for running, but I’m so, so sorry really.”

Vlad blinked, watched as Daniel moved to undo the restraints on his other leg before moving up to his arms and he remembered. “You were… you were in the stairwell, I saw you.” He whispered and the pained look that flooded Daniel’s eyes brought a devastated ache to his chest unrelated to his injuries. The boy blamed himself when it was clear he was in just as much danger as Vlad was. Like him Daniel dreamed of being found out, “I don’t hate you. I glad you ran I— I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy,” he mumbled, trying to be reassuring and he was pretty sure he failed but then Daniel’s eyes met his and he smiled again.

“Thanks,” he said and it was simple and small, but it was the most genuine response Vlad had gotten from anyone in such a long time. Danny worked to free Vlad, pulling out the stabilizer and watching as Vlad tried to breathe through the pain, healing slowly, “Most of the ghosts I meet are kind of jerks, but you seem nice enough.”

“Maybe because I’m too weak to do anything,” Vlad said, feeling a bit of his energy come back, brain slowly forming into a cohesive unit, “You shouldn’t be so casual around ghosts.”

Daniel flexed, grinning widely with faked overconfidence, “You probably haven’t seen me fight yet, but I can hold my own against all kinds of ghosts.”

Vlad hummed as he watched the display, the younger bristling with excitement and the unfounded self assurance of most teens, “You fight?”

Danny nodded enthusiastically, “Ghosts like to come through the portal my mom and dad built and I make sure they don’t cause any trouble like say, flooding the high school with meat or stealing all the boxes in town.”

There was something about watching the warmth in Daniel’s eyes as he spoke, something inviting and natural in a way Vlad couldn’t place as his body stitched itself together unimpeded by the stabilizer, “You’re just like a badger,” he laughed, smiling as Daniel faltered in his prideful speech to look down at him in confusion “And a rather little one at that, thinking you can flex and scare all the ghosts off.”

“A badger!” Danny glared at Vlad, pretending to be a fronted even as a satisfied shiver ran down his spine at the familiar nickname.

Vlad nodded, shifting to sit up slowly, appreciating how Daniel’s hand found his back to help him up as he carefully tested the waters of what he could reveal  
“Mm just like the mascot of my alma mater UW-Madison.”

Danny barely kept his composure as Vlad set out his bait, waiting for him to take it. “My parents went there,” he said, seeming to search Vlad’s face despite having long memorized every emotion it could contort into.

“I know.” Vlad said, keeping it open, watching Danny in return and Danny knew what he was looking for there, a dawning realization that he hadn’t truly had in centuries.

He looked away from Vlad’s eyes, from the red he knew better than the back of his hand, moving his attention to the ghost portal. In the periphery of his vision he watched as Vlad turned his head, looking at the large contraption along with him. Danny stayed quiet for a long moment, lifting his arms to fiddle with his hands, setting them just under his chest and clenching his fingers tight around one another in an act of nervousness and unwanted memories. “I got into a lab accident… I didn’t tell my parents.” He said finally, letting the words hang in the air.

Vlad didn’t answer as Daniel spoke, but his breath caught in his throat as his mind supplied what must have happened as the younger stared intently at Jack and Maddie’s newest portal. He’d been so young… he _was_ so young. To have died like that, like Vlad had, the elder halfa could hardly imagine it. How had he kept it from his parents?

“It happened so fast, we thought the portal didn’t work. My friends and I, we were just goofing around. I wanted to look inside of it and it turned on and I…” Danny looked down at himself, at his hazmat suit covered body, the gloved palms of his hands, “I woke up like this.”

Vlad wanted in that moment to reach out, wanted to provide the comfort he had never received after his own incident. He could hear the pain and fear and sadness all mixing in Daniel’s voice and he longed to soothe it. Jack and Maddie’s experiments had now killed two people and their son was left in this house, left to see what they did to ghosts, imbued with the same all too real fears Vlad felt. “I’m sorry.” He said and for the first time in a very long time, he meant those words completely.

Danny turned back to Vlad, moved to touch his shoulder, then faltered, pulling back just a touch, letting Vlad wonder why he’d almost touched him before he spoke again “Their friend at school he, my parents told me he got into a lab accident too. Is that true?”

Searching Daniel’s face Vlad could see that he’d already begun to realize what had happened, a small flicker of hope moving across his expression just as that same hope began to fill his chest and replace a long seated loneliness, “It is.”

“I’m sorry they hurt you… Vlad.”

Tears threatened to well in his eyes at the all too simple statement. After all these years Jack and Maddie had never once said sorry. He had hoped they would at some point, had longed for them to reach out and reconcile, and he’d begun to think it might be possible during the reunion. But after what they had just done, well, he wasn’t quite sure anymore.

He’d wanted someone, anyone, to know who he was, what he was, and just say sorry. That comfort was so simple and yet had been out of reach for so long. But here it was.

Daniel gave it to him and didn’t ask for anything in return.

“If I’d know it was you I would have tried harder,” Danny added, letting the fears he’d expressed earlier seep back into the conversation.

“No it’s okay, I’m glad,” Vlad said, moving to place his feet on the floor, wincing a bit at the lingering pain. The speed at which he healed since his incident was one of the few things he was thankful for, but he hadn’t received injuries of this magnitude since he’d first died. He had been scared and alone and unable to properly control his newfound abilities. Vlad knew all too well how fast the ground could come up towards you as you fell.

Had Daniel been hurt like that?

“Glad you got dissected?”

Vlad shook his head, managing a weak laugh, throat still raw, “Vivisected technically, but yes, I’m glad. I got to find out what you were, find out I’m not alone in this.”

Danny smiled as Vlad stood, reaching out so Vlad could steady himself on his hand, “Yeah I guess you're right.” He said, watching with feigned awe as Vlad allowed himself to slip back into his human form. He looked as exhausted as Danny had predicted he would, “You’re probably too injured to go all the way back to Wisconsin… I’ve got a blow up mattress and my door locks, you could stay here until you feel well enough, if you want.”

Vlad was a bit taken aback by the offer, they had just met after all and he’d never met a teen so willing to allow an adult let alone a near stranger into their personal space, but looking down at himself he supposed it made sense. Teleporting to Wisconsin in his state was out of the question and flying didn’t sound particularly pleasant either. He nodded as Daniel turned intangible, doing the same as the younger halfa led him up and into his room.

It looked about what you’d expect a teenager’s room to look like, books and papers strewn about, a pile of clothes in a chair in the corner. The ceiling was covered in glow in the dark stick on stars and there were posters of planets and rocket ships on the wall, “You like space?” He asked, trying to make easy conversation as the boy rummaged around in his closet and tugged out a box with a blow up mattress and air pump.

“Mhm!” Danny hummed, laying the mattress on the floor and screwing the pump in, beginning the tedious and boring task of blowing it up as quietly as he could so his parents wouldn’t hear, “I want to be an astronaut, or well, an astronomer or something. I don’t think my grades are good enough to be an astronaut.”

“If you were an astronaut you wouldn’t need a helmet, we don’t need to breathe while we’re ghosts,” Vlad said, sitting down in Daniel’s desk chair and smiling as he laughed.

“Yeah but what if I changed back accidently? Sure we can’t like… die, die, but it’d still hurt.”

Vlad winced at the implications, at the confirmation that Daniel was having trouble with his abilities. He tried not to picture Daniel getting injured, Vlad had experienced enough gore for one night, “I could teach you how to control it better,” he offered welcoming warm thoughts of training with the younger, of giving him the support he had so desperately wanted. It was easy to imagine long hours, working hard to better themselves, to understand what they had become. They could research together, maybe even explore the Ghost Zone.

Danny perked up, stepping into Vlad’s personal space to grab his hands tightly, “Really?”

Daniel’s hands clutching his own suddenly had Vlad freezing, unaccustomed to the touch, but thinking back to the night before he remembered how Daniel had been quick to lean over him. Vlad supposed the younger was just at ease with physical contact. Some people were simply touchy feely, Daniel must have picked that up from Jack. Vlad smiled at the thought.

He may have lost his friends, but with Daniel he could still stay close to them in a way and he could be himself without worry of exposing his less than human aspects.

“I’d be glad to,” he said, squeezing Daniel’s hands back before the younger slipped away to finish his bed and pull out some sheets and a blanket for him.

“You should probably shower,” Danny said over his shoulder, “My parents will think it’s me and it might help you feel better.”

Vlad couldn’t agree more, turning intangible and heading down the hall to the bathroom to wash off the long, painful, and yet somehow good day. He wished he hadn’t been caught and he knew the lab would haunt him, even now he could feel that panic pushing at the back of his throat, but he wasn't alone. That knowledge overwhelmed the fear for now, overshadowed the pain and humiliation.

By the time he came back to Daniel’s room the teen had curled up asleep on his bed, tucked under the covers. Vlad couldn’t help but look at him. He was sorry that Daniel had died so young, but he was also glad and in a way that made him feel like a monster. Who was actively happy that a child had died?

Still, Daniel gave him hope that the future wouldn’t look as lonely as the past two decades and he offered up a small, silent prayer to whoever would listen that he wouldn’t be abandoned this time.

Danny heard Vlad come back into the room, pretending to sleep as the elder halfa watched him for just a few short moments before he settled onto the air mattress. Danny had wanted to give Vlad his bed, or better yet for them to share, but he didn’t want to push too hard right after a traumatic event.

He waited silently as Vlad shifted around to get comfortable, his movements growing more and more spread out until he stilled all together and let out a long slow breath, sinking to sleep. Danny let him rest for a while, watching the red glow of his alarm clock as it tracked the minutes.

It was funny that time still worked.

Eventually he was satisfied that Vlad was asleep enough for him to overshadow him, slipping into his dreams and carefully ushering the impending nightmares away. Vlad wouldn’t be dreaming of the lab tonight.

No, tonight Vlad’s dreams were filled with them training and laughing as Danny let Vlad know that he would never, ever be alone again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!
> 
> Sorry if this wasn’t the best chapter ahhh, I’m not too satisfied with it even tho like I like the ideas in it  
> And I’m sorry for typos I am tired of looking at it lol  
> Writing be like that sometimes  
> Anyway!  
> Hope you guys like evil Danny! 
> 
> Also! Good god I need more Vlad dissection, it’s always Danny, give Vlad some love guys. I want it, it was fun to write, I just 😘 👌 cut a boy up. 
> 
> Kudos and comments as always appreciated <3


	9. Attempt 26: Final: Log 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place in loop 26, the loop right before loop 27 which as seen from that was a pretty good loop up until Danny told Vlad what all he did. 
> 
> Tw: major character death

  
A pressure moved across his mind, distinct and twinged with an anger he couldn’t wrap his head around.

Vlad was an angry man.

But this?

Even in all his frustrations, all his jealousy and spite, all his murderous intent, his unethical aspirations, Vlad had never felt anger like this.

Anger was red. Anger was hot. That was how Vlad pictured it, a fire burning everything up in its wake, turning the world to ash and blood beneath his feet, but this? This was cold, this was white static and frostbite, creeping up his fingers and arms, ice leaking into his veins in crystalline needles.

Vlad sucked in a sharp breath that left his lungs aching, burning in a way only a winter night could. He remembered running through the snow as a child, gulping down breaths of freezing air. He remembered how it hurt. He remembered wheezing, clutching at his chest, thinking he would die as each inhale stabbed through him thoughtlessly.

He’d kneel to the ground, small and engulfed in a winter coat that was too big for him, he’d hold his hands to his face, press his mittens against his mouth and nose and breath through their fabric to warm him.

Vlad looked down at his hands, they were black and blue, the colors sliding up his skin, flooding him with pins and needles. Terrified he tried to flex his fingers, to scrape off the ice as if it weren’t already inside him, a pained cry leaving him as they shattered to leave jagged stumps behind.

This wasn’t happening… this wasn’t happening... this was—!

Vlad jolted awake with a start, he drug in a quick breath and he expected it to be warm and comforting. Wrapped up in his sheets and blankets the air around him should have been inviting, set perfectly by his expensive thermostat. Instead he was greeted by more ice, the cold chasing him out of his dream and smothering the steady heat of his core, turning the fire there to dull embers.

Vlad’s hand flew to his shirt, seeking out the horrid sensation to claw it from him as he realized he was under attack. Scrambling to sit up he found the room encased in ice, the frost curling around the bedposts and up along the canopy. His teeth chattered together as they bared angrily, eyes focusing through panic and exhaustion as a figure appeared before him.

It was a ghost, a young boy. He looked barely old enough to be in highschool, lanky and awkward, a horrible time to die. His eyes were a bright, unsettling green, hair a stark white to match the iced he’d drenched Vlad’s bedroom in.

Vlad changed into Plasmius as he launched forward, intent on blasting the child away or to bits it didn’t matter. He would be satisfied if it fled or turned to a pile of ectoplasm on the floor, what was important to Vlad was that his home was free of intruders and the cold left with him.

He was flung across the room, slamming into the wall and crumpling to the floor. He hadn’t had time to register the ghost’s movement, hadn’t had time to turn intangible and phase through his bedroom and into the hall.

The pressure of his dreams engulfed him again and Vlad stared wide eyed as the boy landed, ice crunching under his feet. He’d never felt an ecto-signature so strong, had never sensed an entity so ready to consume and so clearly capable of doing just that.

“I’m sorry,” The boy mumbled and Vlad watched as tears rolled down his cheeks to freeze against his skin, dusting his lashes white as he cried, “I couldn’t fix it. I tried so hard.”

Vlad didn’t know what the ghost was talking about, but given that many spirits said seemingly random things, often tied to how they died and their subsequent obsessions, he didn’t think much of it. Instead he tried to focus on leaving. It was clear to him that this apparition wasn’t something to be messed with. He was far stronger than he appeared and Vlad would be willing to bet, far older.

He turned intangible, only to stiffen as he was stopped, arms wrapping around his shoulders.Vlad’s muscles tensed, ready to fight, to struggle, but a cold hand slid to his neck, fingers clenching down as best they could given the size difference, a deep and silent threat shoving its way through his brain.

“Why do you always try to run from me, Vladimir?” A clone of the ghost murmured from behind him, speaking far too softly into his ear, lips brushing against his skin to sear it like dry ice. He flinched, a frightened sound escaping unbidden passed his lips as his mind ran a mile a minute.

How did this ghost know his name? Where had he come from? Why did he feel so powerful, so old, so _ancient_.

The thought stuck out to him and he gasped, heavy and plenty enough to allow more of the cold to flood into him.

An ancient, he’d never truly run into one. In all his years as a halfa, exploring and researching the Ghost Zone, unearthing powerful artifacts, interacting with inhabitants, he’d never met an ancient. But if this wasn’t one, if this pressure, this power, wasn’t an ancient then what was? If this creature who had so carelessly thrown him across his room, whose ice threatened his core in mere seconds, who wordlessly communicated he could wipe him from the very face of existence wasn’t an ancient then what could be?

It didn’t wait for an answer, voice over flowing with a frustration and melancholy that put Vlad’s own to shame, “I love you, do you know that, Vladimir, I love you so, so much”

Vlad wanted to wonder why the ghost said those words, wanted to argue that no, no he didn’t love him, he couldn’t, they didn’t know one another. But another part of him could feel it. Like ice boring holes into a mountain the emotions crept into him, freezing to open cracks in his mind and pour knowledge in and it hurt.

He felt deep loss and regret and guilt and fear, so much fear he couldn’t comprehend it. There was desperation and greed and anger, hatred for others and for the self, longing, weariness, obsession and love. It was buried, but even love was there, far down and hungry, possessive and vicious and wanting, but there ugly as it was.

“I have to know everything,” the entity said, soft like it was sorry, like what it was doing hurt it physically and Vlad thought when he caught the ghost’s eyes that perhaps it did. “I can’t keep doing it like this, I’ve tried so hard to be gentle and you always… Vlad I have to know everything. Even if things aren’t always the same I need to know _you_ fully.”

A hand pressed to his chest, the skin underneath reddening before paling quickly to a purplish blue that inched its way to black. Vlad screamed, legs rising up to kick him back, to shove his way through the wall, to turn intangible but the boy held him down. Vlad charged a ghost ray to his palm and shot it at the ghost still floating in front of him. The boy lifted his hand, letting it glance off his skin like water rolling down a duck's back, like he couldn’t be bothered with it, like Vlad was beneath him.

Vlad tried to summon a clone but found himself unable to as the ghost's presence overwhelmed him and suppressed his core. The hand reaching into his chest from the doppelgänger behind him sunk in further and Vlad felt his body desperately trying to revolt, moving without his conscious thought, gripping the ghost’s arm only to cry out as his fingers froze on contact with its hazmat suit, “Stop!!” He shouted, howled as the ghost's fingers wrapped around his core and pulled and Vlad felt it move. His core shifted inside his body, caught up in frozen ice it rose through him. Vlad hadn’t known such a thing was possible and perhaps if it wasn't excruciating he would have taken the time to marvel at the biological significance of it.

The ghost, the ancient, in front of and behind him crooned softly into his ears gentle apologies, quiet reassurances as he screamed, the pain of being torn in two all consuming.

_“It will be over soon.”_

_“I’m sorry.”_

_“I love you.”_

_“I only need it for a moment.”_

_“It will be okay.”_

_“Next time I’ll know everything.”_

_“Next time I’ll make you fall in love with me.”_

_“Next time will be easy.”_

_“I promise.”_

_“I promise.”_

_“I promise…”_

His rings lit up around him, flickering into existence, back bowing at a harsh, near inhuman angle as the boy pulled his core from his chest, dragging it up from where Vlad had sworn it would cling steadfast, but no, it slipped out, easy as anything and glowing a bright, consuming magenta.

Vlad knew agony.

His body and his core were not meant to be separated and he was left less because of it. His jaw ached and he only distantly realized it was because he was still screaming, still pleading for it to stop, his ears ringing too loud for him to hear, the high pitch absorbing everything around him until it reduced the world to static.

The ice that grew around him expanded and thickened, the frost turning to a glass cocoon and Vlad couldn’t tell if he trembled from the pain of having his core removed, the cold, or from sheer terror.

It was all three.

He knew that, he denied it in his fear, but Vlad knew deep down and so did the ghost in front of him as it pressed his core to his chest, his rib cage lighting up silver, glowing a pure white light the kind Vlad could remember seeing for just a moment before he’d changed into his ghost form for the very first time there in that god forsaken Madison Wisconsin hospital mere miles from Jack and Maddie. He’d seen it, seen maybe even this ghost, right before he’d died.

And he died now, Vlad thought. He had to be… it felt as if he were dying all over, but wrong in a way the first death hadn’t been. He was too hollow. Any moment he’d crack inward like an egg shell, at any second he would cave and crumble. But just before he did he caught sight of something within the boy’s ribs, dancing between the lights.

There in their silver cage were two other spheres of colors, two distinct and circling cores. One was a bright, vibrant green as toxic and verdant as the boy's eyes.

The other was lavender.

Vlad didn’t wake up.

The loop reset.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun, dun, dun 
> 
> Hey guys! Hoped you liked this lil chapter. This loop only has one story, this one. Essentially Danny got zapped by the portal and went immediately to Vlad’s house to figure out as much about Vlad as he could in the most efficient way he could determine, even if that meant ruining the loop. 
> 
> We’ll get to see the immediate aftermath of this scene later in the fic, but for now the next chapter will take us back to Null, before all the loops began uwu

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> Feels super weird to write such a short chapter. 
> 
> Anyway kudos and comments as always appreciated and I hope to see y’all at chapter two uwu. 
> 
> Also! Come join the pompep discord if you'd like!
> 
> https://discord.gg/u6cSG5b


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